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April 24, 2007

"Don't Get Eliminated!": In This Pre-Apocalyptic World

...of toilet paper offsets and pizza parlor penis pruning, I think "experts" should step back a little and listen to themselves speak. How 'bout a run through for the voices in their heads first, vice immediately issuing quotes for posterity? A classic example of this would be...

...Did Simon Cowell contribute to the massacre at Virginia Tech? An expert on bullying says he did. “I think we are experiencing something amiss culturally where the TV shows, if you turn them on, [show] people are laughing at one another’s pain,” Barbara Coloroso, author of “The Bully, the Bullied, and the Bystander,” told Alberta’s Daily Herald Tribune. “Enjoying seeing someone kicked off the island, enjoying seeing someone go down in flames on ‘American Idol.’”

Simon may be the a$$hole America has come to love, but those folks in 'pain' stood in line for hours for the privilege of experiencing his critique, fully aware it could end in that very public excoriation. It is, in all instances ~ be it William Hung or a naked, overweight, tax dodging gay guy ~ a COMPETITION. It might be mean, but they volunteered for it. (The Ansperger syndrome kid did not, nor the pudgy, quiet child with the appalling first name trying to disappear in the back of the bus.) You trivialize a psychopath's evil with irresponsible assertions. There was no 'Survivor', but there still was a Charles Whitman. Had there been no Simon Cowel, I can assure you there would still be a Cho.

I'd like to point out such self-induced public humiliation has been a source of much merriment in other countries with no resulting massacres ~ the Japanese have made a national sport of it. In frivolous evidence, I offer one of our favorite guilty pleasures (lovingly and imaginatively dubbed for the translation challenged) for the curious to ponder and the squeamish to avoid.

"If you're sick and need help, who do you turn to?"

"Cocktails!"


Well, exactly.

Posted by tree hugging sister at April 24, 2007 03:36 PM

Comments

Even further back and even more infamous was Leopold and Loeb.

As much as I like MXC, there's even more insane examples such as this one and this one.

Posted by: Gunslinger at April 24, 2007 04:57 PM

Well, no one's named 'Babaganoush' in those.

Posted by: tree hugging sister at April 24, 2007 05:06 PM

Anybody who is dorkingly unfamiliar with people laughing at other peoples' pain has never ridden a motorcycle, especially off-road - my KTM 300 actually happens to be the MXC model! You crash, we laugh! Then we go to help.

Posted by: DirtCrashr at April 25, 2007 11:38 AM