The Ethics Alarms “Worst Excuse Ever” list of champions gained a new member this week.
Meet Merlin Lu.
Merlin Lu, a 21-year-old moron, has been charged with a hate crime, arson and other offenses after he set a cross on fire on June 9 in a Chicago park, police said. Lu admitted to a TV station this week that he was responsible for the the cross burning in Grant Park, but insisted that it was not a hate crime or intended to emulate the cross burnings the Ku Klux Klan infamously used during the Jim Crow era to terrorize blacks in the South.
Lu appeared in court Thursday on four felonies and four misdemeanors, including a hate crime, property damage and burning a cross to intimidate. He insists that he was protesting President Donald Trump and Christian nationalists, and had no intention of expressing racist hate for blacks, Catholics, and any of the symbol’s original targets. “I did know about this historical relevance beforehand. But I didn’t know the severity, how racially motivated it may seem from what I did,” Lu said of a burning cross. “Cause my protest has nothing to do with race.”
Lu’s defense attorney, Alexander Michael, told the judge that Lu was exercising free speech in a “foolish manner.” You mean like expressing himself in a manner that didn’t come within a mile of expressing what you meant? This reminds me of a bit in “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum,” the Sondheim musical comedy, where the Roman slave Pseudolus is asked a question by an intimidating general. He answers “No!” and the general reacts by bellowing menacingly, “NO???!!!” to which Pseudolus quickly replies, “I mean yes! I said “no,” but I meant yes!”
Lu’s LinkedIn page says he has attended college in Indiana and Chicago, but he apparently never studied American history. Or law. Or logic.
Lu’s “My burning cross didn’t mean what burning crosses always mean and I didn’t think it would seem racially motivated” now joins the three previous worst excuses in Ethics Alarms annals, making the total four. In chronological order, the three earlier winners are…
Ethics Alarms 
Is Merlin an immigrant or a 1st generation American? Or even a 2nd gen?
A lot of people bemoan (rightly so) that very recent immigrants do not seem to care much about really groking our foundational histories and foundational myths- so much that they don’t even bear passing familiarity with some of the key cultural “landmarks” of our history.
Could it be also, that they are wholly unfamiliar with some of our darker past as well?