By BILLY MURPHY
Laugh Lines

As the “Snowstorm of the Century” was approaching Georgia last Thursday night, I was watching the local news for some much needed comic relief and — bang! — there it was. Newscaster John Pruitt was giving pointers for “Snow Jam 2000” and he said that if your power goes out, you should not bring your barbecue grill into the house to cook your food. No irony, no wit, just a straight-faced tip for, I guess, those Super Bowl tailgaters, who are snowed in. What another great example of dumbing down for stupid America.

My belief system is the farthest thing from evolution but if natural selection has any validity it would mean that somebody so dumb as to light an outdoor grill inside a house should not live to carry on his species. Some people are stupid but should we all be responsible for that? Should we all have to suffer through monosyllabic newscasts because some guy in a trailer in Loganville is still using a can opener because he can't figure out the mechanics of the “pop-top”? I don't think so, but we do.

The whole “dumbing down” movement started way back with the onset of the emergency dialing system. Public service announcements that told people, when in trouble, call “nine-eleven” had to be yanked from the air. It seems a rash of doofuses (or are they doofi?) called in to say they had no “eleven” on their telephone. Quickly the public service announcements were changed to say “nine-one-one.”

Ever since, we have all had to read through moronic disclaimers and instructions aimed at those with the IQ less than room temperature: Umbrellas with instructions like, “works best when fully opened” or Tabasco Sauce bottles that say, “Keep out of eyes.” Gas pumps that say “do not drink,” and Styrofoam coffee cups that say, “contains hot liquid, do not carry between your legs while driving at a high rate of speed, being the stupid, old, trembling, idiot that you are!”

We have reached such depths of “moronocity” because of one deadly combination: the stupid person and the lawyer. At one point in time, when stupid people did stupid things, they didn't run out and sue the grocery store or the hospital or the school system for those institutions' inability to compensate for stupid acts. At one point in time, people had enough pride to admit they were stupid, or friends or family around them would at least help them know it.

Then appeared the liability lawyer.

Like the elderly woman who won all that cash from McDonald's because she was burned by the coffee spilled from the cup she held between her legs, stupid people started hooking up with attorneys and began suing every business with money. So over the past decade or two companies have been writing disclaimers to protect themselves from every dolt who owned a set of yellow pages.

It is sort of like the true story of the family in Chicago who is suing the school system because their son was thrown off the football team for drinking (twice and a DUI). The parents of the boy claim their son is an alcoholic and since alcoholism is a disease, the school system is discriminating against their son and can lawfully be sued under the Americans with Disabilities Act. That law protects handicapped persons from being treated unfairly and with prejudice. I guess being stupid is protected there too.

Nevertheless, life goes on and the evolutionary process just isn't working fast enough.

Back to Opinion Home Page | Back to the top of the page