On the eve of a big week for me, a week which is causing stress-beyond-what-I’ve-experienced-before (which is a wonderful feeling, really), I want to talk about stupid people.
The first photo is of the whiteboard on my door, and you’ll see the message that I’ve written to an anonymous person who I will be calling a “stupid person.”
In case you can’t read it, the person drew their version of a Jewish star and then wrote “Throwing Rocks at Jews = Fascism.” So I would argue that the person who wrote the bottom message is stupid for a variety of reasons:
- Anonymous statements and comments basically lose their legitimacy because of the very fact that they are anonymous – it is simply cowardly. Anonymous comments on blogs, anonymous letters, anonymous notes. They don’t deserve a response until the person who wrote them can claim them.
- Writing something like “Throwing rocks at Jews = Anti-Semitism” would have made a little more sense, but…fascism? Fascism is “State control of economics.” So, throwing rocks at Jews has nothing to do with economics.
- I think they may be referring to a poster that is below my whiteboard that says, “THIS WALL WILL FALL: Collective Punishment is a War Crime” (referring to the Wall in Palestine). Doesn’t show pictures of rock-throwing…not sure where that came from.
- I wrote a previous response to them, which they (I assume it was the author of the comment) erased.
So, I must obviously conclude that they are a stupid person. And now for the second photo:
This one is slightly harder to determine who the “stupid” person is. As I walked out to my car tonight, I found this note attached to the windshield, so they were obviously calling ME the stupid person. Basically, I parked my car in a spot and my left side was a foot away from the line, and my right side was on the line. But I would still argue that they are the stupid person for the following reasons:
- The parking in the Library lot of Princeton is bad – people invariably park VERY VERY close to you. I’ve barely been able to climb into my vehicle sometimes, and I’ve never left anyone a note calling them STUPID.
- I’ve parked in the spot the person who wrote the note had to park in, and it’s doable, even when someone IS on the line (as has been the case many times). Sure it’s a little irritating – but worth calling someone STUPID? That’s harsh.
So, while it “could” be argued that I was stupid here, I must still conclude that the other person was the stupid person.
And those, my friends, are some thoughts on stupid people, as I procrastinate studying for my midterm on Islam (which is a stupid exam, because it consists of 25 multiple choice questions – for a graduate level study of Islam. Hmm). Anyway, be looking for updates on the Emerging Church/Theological Education Caucus here at Princeton – and perhaps, just maybe, we’ll have some audio from the event. We’ll see…