idiots

Got It: Candace Owens Is An Idiot.

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

I am happy to say that I was never especially impressed with Owens, but when she first emerged as a conservative black woman who was not deceived by Black Lives Matter and was an articulate and attractive pundit on the Right, many were. Lately the proverbial blush has been off the rose since she has displayed ugly anti-Semitic attitudes, but never mind: that video makes everything that has come before irrelevant.

That’s signature significance. Anyone who believes that space travel is a hoax is, by definition, an idiot. No one should take Candace Owens seriously. Ever.

Let us never speak of her again.

The Naked Mayor Principle ( or “What an Idiot!”)

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Tom Ross, the “non-partisan” mayor of Minot, North Dakota, has resigned. Guess why. He accidentally sent an explicit nude video of himself to City Attorney Stefanie Stalheim. For some reason, this moron waited for a city investigation to be completed before doing what he should have done the moment it happened, which was back in January. The investigation found that the mayor and Stalheim had concluded a town business related phone call about a Minot police officer who had committed suicide and the mayor sent her the “Ew!” video shortly thereafter.

Ross insisted he sent the video to the wrong address and had intended to send it to his girlfriend. So what? The Naked Mayor Principle, though never explicitly stated here because no previous mayor has been this stupid (or stupid in this particular way), is a natural corollary to the Naked Teacher Principle, which states that a secondary school teacher or administrator who allows pictures of himself or herself showing the teacher naked or engaging in sexually provocative poses to be seem online cannot complain when he or she is dismissed by the school as a result. A high elected official who sends such a photo or video to an employee is in an ethically similar position. Bye!

The frisky mayor handed over his resignation letter prior to a Minot City Council special meeting called to deal with the scandal. The city investigator found that due “to Ross’s position as one of increased visibility, responsibility, and trust, and due to his decision to use a personal cell phone to conduct city business, that the fact that he would use that device to record and send videos of this nature is in and of itself reckless enough that he knew the risk he was taking by engaging in such behavior.” Yah think? The investigator also concluded that the incident met the city’s standard for workplace harassment, whether or not it was accidental. I don’t know about that, but it doesn’t matter. The town’s mayor takes naked photos of himself and sends it to people. Ick. Pooie. Elected officials shouldn’t be behaving like teenagers, even competently. He’s an idiot. Idiots shouldn’t be mayors.

Case closed.

Incompetent Elected Official Of The Month: Jasmine Crockett (D-Tx)

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

I checked: this is quite an accomplishment. Rep. Crockett has been named an Ethics Alarms Incompetent Elected Official of the Month twice within three months; just think of all the idiots in Congress we have endured who still couldn’t achieve that. Jasmine is clearly something special, as the rapidity with which she has accumulated a provocative EA dossier will attest: she’s been serving barely two years, and already has made it clear that she is an arrogant, opinionated, loud-mouth idiot who is under the delusion that she is worth listening to. Do you want evidence that the Democratic Party is in deep, deep trouble? Here it is: Crockett is regarded as a “rising star.” Yikes.

This rising star has been so prolific in making stupid and offensive statements that she is already edging into Julie Principle territory, meaning that we have ample reason to believe that saying dumb things is what she does, she can’t help it, and it is boring and futile to keep complaining about it.

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Confronting My Biases, Episode 18: “I See Stupid People…”

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

Yesterday’s most ridiculous story made me ponder a long-standing bias I know I inherited from my father. The basics:

“A Canadian tourist trying to photograph a shark in shallow water at a beach in the Turks and Caicos Islands this month was bitten by the shark and lost both of her hands, officials said….The shark was about six feet long, according to the Turks and Caicos government, but its species was unclear. The tourist had “attempted to engage with the animal” in an effort to take pictures of it before she was bitten on Feb. 7, the Department of Environment and Coastal Resources in Turks and Caicos said in a statement.“

I have two instant reaction to tales like this. The first is, “What an idiot!” The second is to think of puns and mean jokes, in this case, “Let’s give this woman a hand!” I know it isn’t a kind reaction, or compassionate, or empathetic. On the other hand (there I go again!), if I lost my hands trying to take a photo of a live shark close enough to bite me, I would declare myself an idiot and be awash in shame and self-hate.

Last July I wrote about some guy who injured himself grievously after deliberately lighting a firecracker that he had placed on his head. My feelings about this woman (“She wanted to figure out how to take a photo of a shark, but was stumped!”) are exactly the same. I don’t like the fact that insurance premiums go up because companies have to pay health policies for people who do things like blowing their own heads up and playing with sharks.

I know it’s a bad side of my character. Still, does the Golden Rule apply when there is no way in hell you would do what you are supposed to be sympathetic to the “other” who has been hurt by doing it?

Oh…it doesn’t matter what the species of the shark that attacked the woman was. It was a shark.

She’s gonna need a bigger brain…

What, If Anything, Is The Ethical Response To This Trump Derangement Victim’s Letter To “The Ethicist”?

/ Jack Marshall / 25 Comments

I came so close to not finishing this pathetic lament from someone who has been lied, gaslighted and manipulated to the edge of madness. I’m not going to even bother to read Prof. Appiah’s answer: I thought he had finally stopped picking crazy Trump Derangement inquiries for his weekly column to pander to the Grey Lady’s warped reader base, but he’s back at it with this one.

She wrote, [Gift link! Merry Christmas!]

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And Now For Something Completely Stupid: In South Carolina, An Epic Life Competence Fail

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

The headline says it all:

South Carolina Man Killed By Exploding Firework Mounted On His Head

Accounts say he was “showing off” to entertain his neighbors. Yeah, I know my neighbors would get a kick out of seeing me blow up my head.

Allen Ray McGrew, a 41-year-old father, died instantly when the ignited fireworks he placed on top of his Uncle Sam hat during a neighborhood Fourth of July block party went off. “He was holding this firework over his top hat,” the wife said. “I thought he was just showboating before he set it on the ground. I didn’t realize he had already lit it.” Alcohol was reportedly involved and “may have impaired his judgment,” the New York Post sagely hypothesized.

Further observations:

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Incompetent Elected Official Of The Week: Ector County (Texas) Commissioner Michael Gardner (R) [Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

Alternate headline: “Wow! What an idiot!

Michael Gardner, an elected commissioner in Ector County, Texas, was officiating at his nephew’s wedding in Nebraska and had the cool idea of calling the throng of 200 guests gathered at the outdoor ceremony to order by shooting a pistol into the air. Gardner cocked back the hammer of the weapon but it slipped—he had never fired the Pietta 1860 revolver before—and the gun went off prematurely. Worse yet, the blank he thought he was shooting off was home-made (for a borrowed gun he was unfamiliar with, remember) and wasn’t nearly blank enough. As a result, his misfire shot his 12-year-old grandson in the shoulder.

Other than that, the wedding went off without a hitch.

In an interview with The Washington Post, Gardner said he regretted using a homemade blank, since he had never made one before, and also using a gun that didn’t belong to him and that he had never used . Then there was that shooting his grandson thing. He regrets that too. Luckily, the boy is okay.

Gardner was charged with felony child abuse committed negligently and resulting in serious bodily injury. He turned himself in to authorities the day after the wedding and was released on a $10,000 bond. Gardner could face up to three years in prison, a $10,000 fine or both. He says that the shooting has put his political future in jeopardy.

Ya think?

He also said, incredibly, “Accidents happen.” Well, that accident never happens unless some idiot has the brilliant idea of firing a gun to start a wedding.

Stories like this are why the rest of the world thinks Americans are nuts.

So What IS The Fair And Responsible Way To Identify An “Idiot”?

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

I have to thank Ann Althouse for tracking down The Guardian’s feature, “Want to quickly spot idiots? Here are five foolproof red flags” by Arwa Mahdawi. Like so many other junk pieces published these days, the article shouldn’t have been allowed past the desk of a minimally competent editor, but it does raise a valid question: What does qualify as evidence of signature significance proving someone is an idiot beyond a reasonable doubt?

Let’s forget the technical definition of idiot (someone whose IQ in in the 50-70 range), as that’s not how the word is commonly used today. We say someone is an idiot when we believe that they haven’t just said or done something stupid (because everybody does ), but have done or said something nobody who isn’t stupid would never do. I place the men who injure themselves in sensitive places using vacuum cleaners as erotic aids in that category, for example. those who hang out on “Chimpmania” and are proudly racist qualify: bias at that level really does make you stupid, or, in the alternative, you have to be stupid to be that biased. I have to fight down the urge to conclude that some religious zealots of my acquaintance are idiots, though I cannot imagine anything more idiotic than to say, with absolute certainty, even with condescension, that nobody should believe in dinosaurs because they couldn’t have fit on the Ark, and all the fossils were sneaky fakes planted on Earth by God to test our faith. An executive at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce actually told me this.

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“Dear April: No, Don’t Have Children. Your Letter Proves You Are Too Dumb To Be A Responsible Parent”

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

That would be my entire response to this recent query from “April” to Kwame Anthony Appiah, the ethics scholar whom the New York Times dubs “The Ethicist”(hold on to your skull; it almost blew mine):

I have always loved babies and children. I babysat throughout high school and college, and do so even now as a full-time engineer. My fiancé was drawn to me because of how much he appreciated my talent with and love for children. We have many little nieces, nephews and cousins whom we love but don’t get to see often. We also have always been clear with each other that we would try to have biological children soon after getting married.

That being said, my fiancé and I, who are both Generation Z, care deeply about the planet and painfully watch as scientists predict that the earth will reach 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming by the 2030s. Is it selfish to have children knowing full well that they will have to deal with a lower quality of life thanks to the climate crisis and its many cascading effects, like increased natural disasters, food shortages, greater societal inequity and unrest?

We realize that a child’s very existence adds to our carbon footprint, but as parents we would do our best to foster an environmentally friendly household and try to teach our children how to navigate life sustainably. My fiancé says that because we are privileged as two working engineers in the United States, we can provide enough financial support to keep our children from feeling the brunt of the damage from climate change. Is it OK to use this privilege?

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Now THAT’S An Incompetent Principal!

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Jan McGee was the principal at Burns Science and Technology Charter School in Oak Hill, Florida. Everything at the school of about 1,000 students from kindergarten through 12th grade was going swimmingly until Jan ended up in a long-running online friendship with Elon Musk, or so she thought.

I know how exciting it can be suddenly having a famous celebrity billionaire contacting you and emerging as your pal: I once was emailed by this cool Nigerian prince.

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