The
author Douglas Adams was known for several amazingly brilliant,
often hysterical, and virtually always dead-on observations. One
of my favorites, and I’m paraphrasing a bit, is this: “People
who consider something completely foolproof almost always underestimate
the ability of complete fools.”
A
woman places her month-old grandson in a bin for carry-on items.
Doctors later determine he did not get a dangerous dose of radiation.
Now
let’s set something up right from the very start… I am not trying
to say that screening at airports isn’t a tough job, or, possibly
a worse interpretation, is being run by idiots. That is absolutely
not part of my argument here. But come on… seriously… explain
this to me. Even when they didn’t place it there, how does a baby
manage to make it that far? No one saw the baby placed on the
conveyor belt?
In
the past few years I have had airport screeners ask me to remove
my shoes when the signs clearly stated it was optional. (Something
along the lines of “you may wish to remove you shoes” that was
intended to make sure no metal was scanned or time wasted because
of it.) Having absolutely no metal in my shoes, I wanted to leave
them on. Nope.
As
I wrote about in a travel log of a trip to California, one time
I made it all the way to the gate… including presenting my boarding
pass earlier at security and going through the screening… only
to find out I was supposed to be stopped at security for a random,
more detailed screening.
So,
I guess what I’m saying is that while I’m having a hard time figuring
out what a person must be thinking about in their daydreams to
miss a baby on the conveyor belt, I’m also not having a hard time
accepting it happened.
Crazy?
Sure. Inexcusable? Probably.
This
shouldn’t surprise me though… or any of us. Why?
Because
even when you listen to all of their rules, you
can still find yourself with a problem. Rachel Popplewell
double-checked all of the rules for flying with breast milk. Split
the milk up into appropriate containers. Packaged it properly.
Identified it to security agents. And… was told to throw it out.
There
are stupid people in the world. And there are also stupid things
done, on occasion, by otherwise perfectly competent people. The
x-ray and the breast milk? I’m leaning toward stupid people. The
missed extra stamp on my boarding pass? Let’s go with a stupid
moment.
But
these things happen all over the place. And sometimes, they go
beyond stupid.
It
takes a very special kind of stupid to be Koren Robinson. In July
of 2005, Robinson was supposed to arrive at jail to serve a one-day
sentence for a drunk-driving charge. He… umm… well, he arrived
at the jail drunk. At least, that’s what the police initially
asserted, as I believe those charges were later dropped as part
of an agreement with the court. (You can go ahead and look this
up on your own with the search engine of your choice. Trust me…
Robinson’s name is such a bounty of quality stories I don’t want
to deprive you of exciting reading by only offering one link for
one instance.)
Drinking
before heading off to jail to serve time for drinking… folks,
they’re out there.
But
then we reach even beyond that. To levels truly thought of as
impossible. Gifted levels of stupidity.
O.J.
Simpson.
See?
You cringed and agreed with the “stupid” before I even told you
what part of his history I was going to bring on to this stage.
And
the winner is… a book.
Now…
forget the book itself. If I did it is a very special
kind of stupid. Not gifted stupid. (Stay with me. I mean that.
Let’s follow this through.) In order to write this book, explaining
what would have happened if he had done what he always contended
he didn’t do, Simpson was being stupid. The use of a ghostwriter…
essentially allowing someone else to say what he did, if he had
done what he did, and then endorse what the ghostwriter wrote
for publication while sidestepping it later… that’s a special
kind of stupid.
But
not the gifted level of stupidity.
What
makes Simpson gifted stupid is the money involved. In this type
of project, one of two things is likely… you do it for free and
get paid later (not a chance in hell that happened) or you get
paid in advance (ghostwriter or not). Either way, he certainly
didn’t do it for free, and yet with judgements against him for
this murders and this obviously being a project involving all
of that, how could there possibly be a thought such as (my words):
“if I endorse the story written by the ghostwriter, explaining
how the murders that I’m saying I didn’t commit actually happened,
the people that won a court settlement for damages will never
find out I made money off of the book… right?”
Gifted.