“He’s more than what you’ll ever be.”
—Ian Mendoza, whoever the hell he is, an “X” commenter whose profile says “It’s okay to be anti-Israel don’t let anyone else tell you otherwise”
Out of the mouths of morons occasionally come enlightening idiocy!
Ian was delivering what he thought was a crushing retort to critics of the latest Trump Deranged rant from actor Mark Ruffalo, this one at the Golden Globes. Ruffalo’s name now comes up #1 on Google if you search for “Anti-Trump actor,” just ahead of Robert DeNiro. Like DeNiro, Ruffalo is an excellent actor; also like DeNiro (and a surprising number of seemingly intelligent actors), he is a political, historical, critical thought-deprived ignoramus. The actor was prominently wearing the anti-I.C.E. “Good” pin at the awards show, which I consider signature significance. His latest rant was so fatuous it isn’t worth my time to fisk it, but I was impressed with Ian’s comment.
It perfectly encapsulates the logical fallacy that makes so many Americans pay attention to the outbursts of Dunning-Kruger suffering celebrities. Ruffalo, like AOC, was a bartender for almost a decade, not that there’s anything wrong with that. But he apparently got the idea that he was some kind of public policy guru by winning arguments with drunks. Other than mixology, his only other occupational pursuit of any duration has been acting, which he began in earnest in high school and then immediately entered the professional ranks upon graduation. Wikipedia tells us Ruffalo attended “progressive schools,” so he is a cautionary tale in the perils of ideological indoctrination.
Yet Ian’s retort to a Ruffalo critic implies that Ruffalo’s success as an actor (producer, director, yada yada) means that he believes that the common folk can’t credibly challenge him. It is the equivalent of the old taunt, “If you’re so smart, why ain’t you rich?” The logic of this fallacious query—you can substitute “famous” for rich without changing the crux of the question—is that the rich, famous and powerful by definition must be authorities whose opinions on anything have intrinsic value. Thus it is that people like Whoopie Goldberg and Joy Behar have a platform on ABC News to spout spectacularly ridiculous opinions on matters they are unqualified to opine on. Thus it is that various Jenners are considered “influencers.”
In addition, Ruffalo’s defender shot his barb at someone he knew nothing about, other than the fact that he wasn’t famous. Ian doesn’t know that Ruffalo is “more” than the individual he is insulting, except by a biased and infantile definition of “more.” Acting isn’t nothing, but neither is it everything. This nation has millions of people who have had productive, successful, beneficent lives that accomplished those individuals’ own goals and objectives while leaving the world a little better than they left it. Those lives will still be quickly forgotten, like Ruffalo’s will, as the metaphorical sands of time wash over them. Who can say which of those lives were “more”?
Certainly not Ian.
Ian’s Retort—should I add it to the Rationalizations List?—is the mantra of all of those shallow of mind who worship celebrities and encourage them to spout off on issues they know no more about, and often less, than the average barfly.
Well, thanks to me, I guess, he’s accomplished something positive in his life.
Why ain’t he rich?
Ethics Alarms 
I wonder if Ian thinks that Elon Musk is more than 20k times what Ruffalo will ever be.
I will take your word on his acting skills. I don’t recall ever seeing anything he’s done. I’ve probably seen “The Avengers” because that’s the type of thing I might put on while I do other stuff just to have some background noise. “Seen” may be overstating how much attention I would have paid.
I have made similar retorts to people.
Primarily though, it has been to people who want to tear down statues of Lee and Columbus. It is also been to people who wanted to re-name Lake Calhoun because we should not glorify a slaveholder (or was he an “enslaver”?). I think it is an appropriate retort because we do not honor Calhoun because he owned slaves. We do not honor him because he was a racist. We do not honor him because he rivaled Andrew Jackson in assholery. He got the lake named after him because he was the head of the Department of War and the army surveyors who encountered the lake named it after their boss. And, yes, he also served as Vice-President. So, yes, for all of Calhoun’s bad attributes (and I don’t find that he has many redeeming personal qualities), but he was a long-time public servant whose detractors are puny people whose accomplishments are inversely proportional to their sense of self-righteousness.
-Jut
This pretty much sums up my opinion!
Apropos of absolutely nothing but the lede – which caused me to laugh out loud because of this memory:
In the late 1980s I was the ski patrol director at a ski area in Maine. We had a small staff, and a large clientele. We were busy – ski patrollers do rescue work, of course, but the bulk of the work involves a LOT of slope maintenance involving everything between rakes and heavy equipment. Risk management and mitigation was a much bigger and more important job than first aid.
The mountain was split into zones. Each zone had a senior patroller and anywhere between two and eight other patrollers, depending on the day.
One of my senior patrollers was a gal I’ll call Joan. Joan was pure badass. She was whip-smart (cum laude at one of the sub-Ivies, and not as a legacy), strong as an ox (she was a professional raft guide in the summer, and she free-climbed cliffs in the ‘tween seasons) and, on top of that mix, she was maybe half a nanometer short of drop-dead gorgeous. I’m proud to admit that I was never tempted because I always respected and understood the work relationship, but if I’d been in a different role I sure would’ve made an effort, and no doubt failed.
Bottom line is that Joan was something special, and it was an honor to work with her and help, in a small way, shape her career.
As patrol director I ranged the mountain, going where needed, and if not needed specifically, stopping in at each zone several times a day to check work logs, check things out and make sure everything was functioning smoothly. I happened to be in the top shack of the smallest but most technically challenging zone (read: steepest, where the most serious stuff could happen) when Joan, who was running the zone that day, stuck her head into the door and barked several orders about stuff that still needed to be done, and slammed the door and headed off to deal with something.
One of the newer patrollers – technically skilled but still green – was totally infatuated with Joan. Everybody knew. “Wow,” he sighed. “She’s really something.”
One of my other senior patrollers, who happened to be working the zone as a junior that day, put his arm around the sprout.”Son,” he said consolingly, “she’s more woman than you could ever handle. And more man than you’ll ever be.”
I immediately headed out to slap on my skis and go to another zone, so nobody could hear my explosive laughter, and so I didn’t have to see the look on the sprout’s face. And, as I later came to realize, with the full recognition that it was true of me as well: I respected Joan and our work relationship too much to ever even consider messing with it, but the truth was: if I had been stupid enough to even try, I would have quickly realized that Joan was more woman than I could ever handle, and more man than I’ll ever be.
I chuckle to this day, and that memory will be on my mental playlist when I deem my time is nigh. And Joan is still on the green side of the sod, doing absolutely nothing to put her expensive degree to good use, but living life exactly as she wants to, and in gorgeous mountains to boot. God bless her.
Comment of the Day.
Thank you, but I don’t think a COTD designation is deserved here. It’s a fun story, and true, but there’s really nothing in it that furthers consideration of ethics – at least none that I can see. Far as I’m concerned, this is light entertainment, but offers no elucidation.
Respecting the work relationship (our host has often counseled against vertical dating in the workforce), self-mastery, self-knowledge, I think it counts.
I lost what I thought was my best friend from my lawyering days when he went totally Trump Deranged. (He’s very bright and may be somewhere on the bi-polar spectrum and he may have simply snapped. But come to think of it he’s always had a bit of a social class chip on his shoulder. It may have been put there while he was an undergrad at Stanford.)
But one day around the 2020 election, my erstwhile friend (and one-time partner) mocked me for not being sufficiently apoplectic even about Trump’s being able to breath oxygen and take up space on the planet. It came out of nowhere. I then made the mistake of telling him I didn’t think much of Joe Biden’s running mate, whereupon he told me something along the lines of what a prestigious legal career she’d had, particularly compared to my undistinguished twenty years in the trenches. I was stunned into silence. It was clearly a “She’s more than you ever were” slam. It took my breath away, particularly given who I was being compared to. And sure, this was 2020, but anyone could tell she was an idiot even then. We haven’t spoken since.
Ian’s Retort sounds like the logical fallacy “Appeal to Authority”, but it works in ethics as well. Looking over the list, I suggest making it a subcategory under 11: The King’s Pass, or 12: The Dissonance Drag.