When Idiots Are Given Access to Technology

Here at Aunt Slugger HQ, we do still periodically find ourselves amazed by what people are willing to put on the internet. And here I am not referring to videos of animals bathing in time with an intolerably high-pitched version of a Bobby Darin song, because really, that's art. No, what I am referring to are people who do not realize that the magnitude of their ignorance is a.) not recordable by any standard cognitive tests, and b.) so outrageous it's comical.

The story I am referring to is, of course, the Twitter response to a performance of "God Bless America" at the All-Star baseball game. It seems that Marc Anthony, a well-known singer from New York, sang this song at the game. Your Aunt Slugger is actually familiar with Marc Anthony, despite being almost clinically unable to match a song with its artist; I was introduced to Marc Anthony in college, when a classmate in my "International Political Economy" class invited me over for a study group and played this song on repeat. So whenever I hear or read about Marc Anthony, I think about the 1997 Asian financial crisis.

Anyway, it seems that our fellow Americans took to Twitter en force to bitch about "a Mexican singing God Bless America."

Some examples of these Tweets include, but are not limited to, the following:

• "How they going to pick a got (sic) damn Mexican to sing God Bless AMERICA?"
• "Shouldnt (sic) an AMERICAN be signing (sic) God Bless America? #getoutofmycountry #allstargame"
• "Another disgrace (sic) Marc Anthony singing god (sic) bless (sic) America. Is he even an American citizen?"

Well, there you have it, readers. Apparently, our nation's xenophobes have decided to fight the allegedly deleterious influence of non-English speaking immigrants by having what is at best a weak grasp of the English language. They are going to preserve the nation's dominant language by making flagrantly false and racist statements in Tweets so laden with grammatical errors that we are left wondering if a feral animal has walked across their keyboard.

So to my foreign-born readers who sometimes think their English isn't great, or who are embarrassed by their language skills, stop. Because here we have a group of Americans who were born and educated here, and they are barely literate. You are already ahead of them.

And with that, I am going to go listen to some more Marc Anthony and think about Alan Greenspan.

At least it's not 1955, right? Right...?

As a white person, your Aunt Slugger does occasionally find herself in situations where other white people, assuming that because your Aunt Slugger is white she will "understand," make racist remarks to her. Examples include, but are not limited to, the following:

• "You probably don't want to buy a house in that town. The schools are, shall I say...diverse?" 
• "The blacks can stop complaining now that we have a black guy in the White House." 
• "Is it bad that when you said what the charges were, I knew the defendant was black?"
• "I am glad that Barack Obama isn't acting like some 'homie.'"

These comments come from coworkers, acquaintances, and of course complete strangers. As a white person, this is perhaps the only race-related burden I can claim to bear: unwanted association with racist white people who don't realize they're racist.

Periodically, there will be long stretches of time between these comments, and with the passage of time comes a mellowing of my opinions on exactly how many people are racists. And I think how far we have come as a society. I read books like this one and I think, "Well, at least no one is shipping himself to Philadelphia in a box to escape slavery any more." Progress.

And then there is the story of Emmett Till. Emmett Till was a black kid from Chicago who spoke to a white woman in Mississippi and was beaten beyond recognition to his death because of that. This was in 1955. The white murderers were positively identified by a black witness in the courtroom (which in and of itself was an event, for a black man to openly show anything other than deference to whites). The jury acquitted the defendants after about an hour, with one juror reporting that it would have taken less time had they not taken a break to get soda.

You read that, and you think, "By god, we have come so far." And I am not denying that there has been progress. The George Zimmerman jurors, for example, at least had the decency not to tell us they took an eighteen hour soda break.

But then there is this case. A black defendant, exercising the "Stand Your Ground" law in Florida, fired warning shots to keep her abusive husband away. She did not kill her husband. No one died.

And the jury found her guilty in fifteen minutes. They were apparently not in the mood for soda. 

The point of all this is that I find myself once again issuing a

CRITICAL PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT.
 
If you do not believe racism still exists, and that blacks and other minorities are not marginalized by our society's laws, policies, and judicial system, you are - and I mean no offense here - clinically brain dead. To be a white person and not understand that white people are afforded certain luxuries, like being statistically less likely to be shot by armed vigilantes, assumed to be bilking the welfare system, or being profiled by law enforcement officials, then YOU ARE THE PROBLEM. YOU are the reason a jury acquitted George Zimmerman. YOU are the reason that minorities are still haunted, years later, by Plessy vs. Ferguson and Jim Crow. You are the reason.

And you will probably dismiss your Aunt Slugger as a bleeding heart white liberal. And this is fine. Because at least I am not you.

A New Entry in the Guinness Book of World Records

Dear Aunt Slugger, 

What do you think about the George Zimmerman trial, and what do you think of its broader implications?

Sincerely, 
Margaret D. Tomkins, Milwaukee


Hello Margaret, 

It's funny you should bring this up, Margaret D. Tomkins of Milwaukee, because I was just thinking about this as I was reading this morning's paper. I was drinking an iced tea from Starbucks and reading an op-ed piece about how the prosecution hasn't proven its case beyond a reasonable doubt, and how he will probably walk. And it does kind of sound as though there is reasonable doubt from a legal perspective, despite the fact that the fuckstick is clearly a murderer.

And as I was reading this, I said to myself, "You know, maybe now, when George Zimmerman walks free after shooting an unarmed teenager, we as a nation will ask ourselves how we have allowed this to happen, how we have allowed gun ownership to become a more basic right than access to Sudafed, and maybe there will be some change -" And then I slapped myself, and vowed only to buy this hallucinogenic iced tea from Starbucks on the weekends.

So that is what I think of the broader implications, Margaret D. Tomkins. A young black man has died in an act of senseless gun violence, and in keeping with what has become a legislative tradition, not one single fuck will be given. Not one single fuck. An armed vigilante engages in racial profiling and shoots an unarmed kid, and our nation's lawmakers will set the record for the number of negative fucks ever given. 

But I received a full-body pat down when I accidentally did not include my mango tango gel deodorant in a TSA-approved clear plastic baggie of liquids in line at airport security last week. So the lesson here is that you may actively seek out a confrontation and shoot a young black man at your leisure, but don't you fucking dare try to refresh your armpits at the airport without proper security clearance.

Sincerely, 
Aunt Slugger

Bearing Arms

Here at Aunt Slugger headquarters, we spend a lot of time reviewing the news for articles that your Aunt Slugger finds relevant to her throngs of devoted readers. Sometimes these articles inspire us to make the world a more beautiful place. Sometimes these articles remind us that, even in our darkest hour, we are never alone. And sometimes these stories are just examples of solid news reporting.

But today the Aunt Slugger News Team happened upon this article about how gun shops saw record sales the day after the Sandy Hook massacre in Newtown, Connecticut.

I will pause for a moment while you think about that.

Your Aunt Slugger is not here today to debate the right to bear arms, or the root causes of the Sandy Hook massacre, since I am confident that we will soon come to a consensus on these matters via Facebook status updates and anonymous comments on news articles. No, I am here today to warn my readers of a bigger threat, and that is

PEOPLE WHO BUY GUNS THE DAY AFTER A MASSACRE BECAUSE THEY BELIEVE GUN POLICY WILL CHANGE IN LESS THAN FORTY-EIGHT HOURS. 

Think about this for a moment. Here we have a group of people who are aware of the Sandy Hook massacre because they responded to it by stockpiling weapons (I think it is safe to infer causality in this instance). So we know that these people are at least somewhat literate, or minimally do not have impaired hearing and comprehension skills. So it would stand to reason that these people are, nominally, dimly aware of the United States Congress and/or their state legislatures. So even if they don't know specifically how to repeal a Constitutional Amendment, they should at least know that our politicians will fight about fucking anything.

And the right to bear arms is not a Thin Mint issue, either. People love the fuck out of their weaponry. So I think we can assume with a high degree of certainty that repealing the Second Amendment, or even just preventing people from exercising their right to shoot themselves in the thigh, is not going to happen overnight. Or in a week. So you can probably give it a little time before you hit your local arms dealer to make sure your rocket launcher is grandfathered in.

Yet people mobbed gun shops the day after the massacre because they thought gun policy would change instantly. Which means that they are exhibiting an unprecedented degree of ignorance. And...they're armed. THEY'RE COMPLETE FUCKING MORONS, AND NOW THEY'RE ARMED.

Think about that.

Happy Holidays.

Sincerely,
Your Aunt Slugger

Teachers' Unions

Dear Aunt Slugger, 

I am sick and tired of the Chicago Teachers Union strike. The only thing teachers' unions are good for is protecting bad teachers, and I am appalled by the number of bad teachers in our public schools. It is a real tragedy. 

Sincerely,
Ernest in Skokie

Dear Ernest, 

You know what I am sick and tired of, Ernest? You, Ernest. I'm sick and tired of you. Let me ask you this, Ernest: What do you do for a living? Do you have coworkers, Ernest? If so, I want you to sit back and think about your coworkers. Are any of them idiots? No? If you can't figure out who the idiots are at your workplace, you are guaranteed to be the idiot. People probably groan when they get emails from you. Your bosses probably have conference calls about how to pawn you off on another department. The people who interviewed you have probably been denied promotions for their bad judgment. You are also almost certainly really, really annoying as well. 

I say all of this, Ernest, to illustrate a point. I am always confused--almost as confused as you, Ernest, become when people use large words in emails--when people complain bitterly about teachers' unions. "They protect bad teachers," people say.

You can debate the merits of this point, which I will not do here. What I am so confused about is why people act as though no other industry is afflicted by sub-par employees. People act as though teachers should be exempt from having appalling work habits.

I know what you're thinking. "My industry doesn't have this problem. We are very professional. We only hire the best people." If you really think that, you're probably the most annoying person in your company, and people are probably plotting to get rid of you as you read this.

Your Aunt Slugger has worked in a few different industries over the years: I have worked for the government, in higher education, in public accounting, and in finance. In only one of these roles was I represented by a union. And every single one of these industries has been CRAWLING with morons. Morons of every variety: socially inept people, people with advanced degrees who are functionally illiterate, people who look at images of naked people on their computers and become confused when their coworkers complain, people who microwave fish in the office kitchen, people who leave passive-aggressive notes on office equipment, people who try to hit on every employee of the opposite sex in the entire office, and people who bristle when asked to do actual work. 

Very rarely are these people ever fired. They are allowed to carry on, annoying their coworkers, for years or even decades. This is usually because no one wants to deal with it, or knows how to deal with it, or even can legally deal with it. How do you fire someone for being dumber than a can of Beanee Weenies? It's harder than you think.

My point here is that teachers' unions do not protect bad teachers. The preponderance of idiots in society as a whole protects bad teachers, as well as bad accountants, bad sales clerks, bad equity traders, bad scuba divers. It is the nature of any workplace that there will be people who are so unbelievably stupid that you wonder if you have died and gone to hell. The fact that bad teachers are educating our youth somehow worries you more than the fact that Fortune 500 companies are largely audited by youth in their mid-twenties who are only vaguely aware that Canada is its own country.

So stop with the double-standard. You know there are intellectually void creeps in your workplace. YOU KNOW IT. But you're critical of another industry for having the same problem? Fools are ubiquitous. Once you learn that lesson, life will become much easier for you. Possibly slightly more depressing, but much easier. 

Sincerely, 
Aunt Slugger

On Voting

Dear Aunt Slugger, 

I am sick and tired of the 2012 presidential election. Both sides are wasting my time. I was thinking about voting for one side, but that's like voting for the lesser of two evils, and I won't stoop to that level. So I am not going to vote AT ALL to show my-


To show your what? Your delightful post-modern individualism? Look, chief, I'm going to go out on a limb here and assume that you fancy yourself something of a scholar on the plight of the nation. You view yourself as a bulwark of reason and logic amidst the frenzied partisan politics that has taken over the nation. So you--the astute intellectual--have risen above it all, pondered the situation, and realized that neither candidate is worthy of your vote.

Congratulations--you have finally realized what the rest of us figured out the first time we voted in a student council election. You have finally caught up.

Anyone who has ever paid attention during an election, or even just listened to fifteen seconds of a candidate speech during a campaign, knows that the candidates are NEVER worth voting for. They are ALWAYS pandering to someone and they are FOREVER blowing smoke up your ass. This is because the type of people who run for federal office are almost always the same people who campaigned for your college's student governing body by promising to overhaul [insert something completely out of their reach: the tenure system for professors, the interstate running behind the campus, the punishment for running a brothel out of a dorm room]. A two hour dinner with your average federal candidate will have you dipping your body into a vat of bleach to try to get the slime off.

That being said, I don't see you out there running for office. And you certainly know that your Aunt Slugger isn't going to run on a platform of telling everyone to go fuck themselves. So I always just get out there and I vote, as odious as the task sometimes is. I, personally, always vote for the "lesser of the two evils" (one of the two candidates who actually has a chance of winning). But if you want to vote for the candidate of one of those weirdo parties that always offers up some wild-eyed screaming lunatic, you should vote for that candidate. Or you should start a write-in campaign to elect your hamster. But you should fucking DO IT and STOP PISSING ABOUT THE CANDIDATES LIKE YOU ARE THE FIRST PERSON TO NOTICE THAT THEY ALL SUCK. Because this is not news. So if you're not going to actually run for office, and you're not going to vote, your apathy is even more repulsive than the candidates themselves - which I didn't think was possible.

Aunt Slugger

Presidential Elections

Dear Aunt Slugger, 

I was reading this op-ed piece by David Rothkopf today, and I am really worried about the state of American politics. Mr. Rothkopf says that Barack Obama and Mitt Romney "are running a campaign that has the sensibilities and IQ of a typical middle school student council election. With the values of an episode of 'Real Housewives' or 'Big Brother.'" How can we resolve this problem? What can we, the voting public, do?

Sincerely, 
Concerned in Connecticut

Dear Concerned, 

You know what you can do? You can calm the fuck down is what you can do. 

There are two groups of people who are allowed to say, with genuine sincerity, that they are shocked by how low-class the current election is. These two groups are 1.) people in the 18-21 age range who are just now able to vote in a presidential election and as such are paying attention to an election for the very first time in their lives, and 2.) people who have been decapitated.

I don't know which category David Rothkopf, "CEO and editor-at-large of the FP Group" and "visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace," falls into. But it has to be one of the two. Because if you have lived through more than one election and you haven't figured out that presidential elections are a form of federally-sanctioned sketch comedy, then you are either a young fool, or your brain is on a sidewalk in Hoboken right now. 

Presidential elections have ALWAYS been a clown car on a hot summer's day. The nation has ALWAYS been "more divided than ever before." The fact that Mitt Romney and Barack Obama haven't challenged one another to a duel or spit chewing tobacco into the audience at a Harvard fundraiser is a sign that this election is BORING AS SHIT. 

Back in the 1800s, those old racist dudes would HAVE AT IT with each other. There was one election where a candidate was routinely referred to as "jackass." If that happened today, we'd have like 2 million tweets from people angry that their 6-month-old baby heard a candidate swear on national television. We'd have 48,000 two-member Facebook groups with names like "I Won't Vote Until U Campaign With Dignity." And David Rothkopf, Visiting Scholar, would go into anaphylactic shock. 

Some people are very philosophical about political mud-slinging: "Candidates reveal a lot about themselves when they attack the opposition," these modern-day political theorists will say. All right, Plato. That might be true. But your Aunt Slugger is in it for the entertainment. There is nothing better - and I mean nothing better - than watching rich people try to explain their latest gaffe by making a series of additional, equally offensive gaffes. My only hope is that someday, in my lifetime, the candidates will start scratching at each others' faces on live television. 

Stop worrying, Concerned. And stop listening to "David Rothkopf, Visiting Scholar," because he obviously never took political science. Or read Wikipedia. Or paid attention during any American presidential election during his lifetime. 

Grab your Junior Mints and popcorn.

Aunt Slugger