The Mind Boggles

I am 61 years old, and I've been around.

I've worked blue collar jobs, served in the Army, endured a white collar career, and most recently earned a living got paid for teaching college students.

I've lived in multiple states and countries, and visited many more.

I've seen (and done) things I wish I could forget.

I've been married three times.

In short, I thought I'd pretty much lost the capacity to be surprised by the stupid things human beings are capable of.

I was wrong. Here's two recent examples that just boggled my mind when I heard about them.

Fired For Using The Word 'Negro' In Class

Petrona Smith is suing the New York school system. She says in a lawsuit that she was fired after a seventh-grader reported that she'd used the word 'Negro' in class.

Sounds pretty insensitive right? After all, everyone knows that 'Negro' is considered offensive to people of color.

There's only one problem. Ms. Smith was teaching a Spanish class, and 'negro' is the Spanish word for the color black. It has no racial connotation.

Smith doesn't deny using the word. But she argues that everyone uses it, when speaking Spanish. She was teaching the Spanish words for different colors, and the color "black" in Spanish is "negro." ... And by the way, Smith, who is from the West Indies, is black.

No word from the New York public school system on how they expect a Spanish teacher to tell her students the word for a certain color without using that word.


Parking Tickets Issued On Burned Out Wrecks While Riots Rage Around Them

Since last Sunday, May 19, rioters have taken to the streets of Stockholm’s suburbs every night, torching cars, schools, stores, office buildings and residential complexes. Yesterday, a police station in Rågsved, a suburb four kilometers south of Stockholm, was attacked and set on fire.

(Side note: the rioters are overwhelmingly muslim, a fact that is overwhelmingly not mentioned in most media accounts, with this notable exception: "Young Muslims who enjoy tolerance, social institutions and welfare while living in Sweden nevertheless refuse to integrate into the West..." That is pretty stupid by itself, but it gets worse.)

But while the Stockholm riots keep spreading and intensifying, Swedish police have adopted a tactic of non-interference. ”Our ambition is really to do as little as possible,” Stockholm Chief of Police Mats Löfving explained to the Swedish newspaper Expressen on Tuesday.

”We go to the crime scenes, but when we get there we stand and wait,” elaborated Lars Byström, the media relations officer of the Stockholm Police Department. ”If we see a burning car, we let it burn if there is no risk of the fire spreading to other cars or buildings nearby. By doing so we minimize the risk of having rocks thrown at us.”

Oh, by all means let the rioters run amok and destroy property, as long as they don't toss a few rocks at the cops. After all, we have to draw the line somewhere.

Okay, that ratchets up the stupidity level another notch. But we still haven't reached the pinnacle yet.

Swedish parking laws, however, continue to be rigidly enforced despite the increasingly chaotic situation. Early Wednesday, while documenting the destruction after a night of rioting in the Stockholm suburb of Alby, a reporter from Fria Tider observed a parking enforcement officer writing a ticket for a burnt-out Ford.

When questioned, the officer explained that the ticket was issued because the vehicle lacked a tag showing its time of arrival. The fact that the vehicle had been effectively destroyed – its windshield smashed and the interior heavily damaged by fire – was irrelevant according to the meter maid...

Can you imagine seeing your car get torched while the cops stand around and watch? And afterwards getting a parking ticket on the burned out hulk? The stupid, it hurts...

A meter maid issues a parking ticket for a burnt-out car following a night of riots in Stockholm.