east village idiot

Congratulations to this week’s Idiot of the Week, Condoleezza Rice. She gets this week’s distinction not for political reasons, but because it appears that George W. Bush’s eloquence has rubbed off on her.

Here’s a quote of hers that appeared in the newspaper this morning. I’m telling you, this quote will totally blow your mind:

The only thing more amusing than this quote is the fact that am New York chose to highlight this quote.

Pure brilliance, Secretary Rice. Only someone with insight like that could be worthy of Idiot of the Week.

Usually the Idiot of the Week award goes to someone who is unquestionably idiotic and does something indefensible. This week, I’m sticking the Idiot of the Week title on someone who is breathing with the help of a respirator in a hospital in Camden, New Jersey (I don’t know what’s worse: breathing with a respirator or spending more than a week in Camden, New Jersey). This week’s idiot is New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine.

But Chris! That’s not fair! You can’t possibly call someone in his condition an idiot!

Yes, I can.

This is the year 2007. I think decades of use, mounds of indisputable scientific evidence, and thousands - possibly millions - of saved lives make it pretty clear that YOU SHOULD WEAR YOUR SEAT BELT.

Maybe I hang with a smart crowd, but I don’t know a single person who doesn’t wear a seat belt, except possibly when in the back seat of a cab in New York City, where it’s considered a faux pas to get into a cab and put on a seat belt (and perhaps an insult to the driver ability to navigate the city streets safely? I don’t understand this logic, because 50% of the time that I’m in a cab, I need to hold on to something as my life flashes before my eyes). My first instinct whenever I get into a car is to put on my seat belt. This is how I was raised. And any parent who didn’t drive that home to their child in the age of seat belts is… just a terrible parent.

Now, it was a little different to not put on your seat belt back in the 80s, before mandatory restraint laws really started to take off. But today, in 49 states, if you don’t wear your seat belt, YOU ARE BREAKING THE LAW.

Which brings us back to Governor Corzine, the highest-ranking official in state government in one of those 49 states, who was conducting official state business in an official state vehicle, and, at the same time, was breaking the law. That’s some real leadership he was showing.

I used to think that seat belts were a means of natural selection: small children aside, people who died in an accident because they were too stupid to understand the benefits of wearing a seat belt were probably doing society a favor, because they couldn’t have been that bright to begin with. But when I learn that a man who holds an M.B.A. from University of Chicago, goes on to make millions as a bond trader, and serves in two prestigious public offices in state and Federal government voluntarily chooses not to wear a seat belt, it messes with my perception of just who exactly is an idiot. Now, I’m left to wonder how many other well-educated, highly-respected public officials don’t wear a seat belt.

So, Governor Corzine, I honestly wish you a speedy recovery, as I wouldn’t wish death upon anyone. But I hope you take your Idiot of the Week award to heart when you strap on your seat belt for the trip back to the state house, and wonder why a full week in intensive care had to be your “wake up call.”

It’s been a while since I’ve dubbed someone the Idiot of the Week, but this woman really deserves it. After the drubbing that she’s given us over the past few weeks, I think that Mother Nature is very much deserving of the honor of this week’s Idiot of the Week award.

First of all, have you looked at a calendar lately? Because I’m pretty sure Mother Nature hasn’t. I don’t know if she can even read a goddamn calendar, because it was warmer on Christmas than it was on Easter. It was warmer for most of March than it’s been in April. I don’t want someone who can’t read a calendar to be responsible for controlling the weather! Seriously, I figure she’s gotta be pretty old. Maybe someone should get her a new pair of glasses. Mother Nature is probably one of those stubborn old ladies who won’t let her children put her in a nursing home when she really shouldn’t be sitting around at home on her own.

Maybe Mother Nature isn’t a big Cleveland Indians fan. Baseball season started, and an entire series of games was snowed out in Cleveland. Hell, they moved the Indians games to Milwaukee this week, and guess what? It snowed in Milwaukee! Seriously, who can’t love that ragtag group of misfits who have gone back to their old “potential-subject-for-a-movie-about-a-disasterously-mismanaged-baseball-team” ways? There’s always the potential that Mother Nature is a Yankees fan. After all, it was about 35 degrees during a Red Sox-Rangers game in Texas last week! Yeah, she could’ve helped the Yankees out in terms of gametime temperatures last week, but there’s only so much you can do when the league is stupid enough to schedule six home games in New York City in the first week of April.

Then there’s my other theory: Mother Nature is a Republican. After all, she’s a spirit, and a lot of Republicans claim that they’re “spiritual people.” So, she must be fucking with Al Gore. She’s throwing him a curveball, so the next time he debates a Global Warming skeptics, all they have to do is fire back with, “well, it snowed in April! How can you explain that, Mr. The-World-is-Ending?”

So, thanks, Mother Nature, for being my Idiot of the Week. And thanks for letting my spring wardrobe sit in the back of my closet for another month. Oh, and you can be sure that I’ll be bitching about you again when it’s 105 degrees with 90% humidity in July.

This week, I’m going to bestow the honor of Idiot of the Week to a countless number of people who have ruined a Connecticut substitute teacher’s life. Among them, the parents of the students in her classroom, the administration of the middle school she was working at, the Norwich Police detective (pictured) who conducted a faulty investigation, the judge at her trial, the heartless prosecutor, the jury that found her guilty, many others who have propagated this travesty.

Some background: Julie Amero, a 40-year-old substitute teacher in Norwich, Connecticut, was looking over a class in October 2004. There was a computer at the front of the classroom.  Poronographic material appeared on the screen while she was present in the room.

GUILTY! GUILTY! GUILTY! She must clearly be guilty! She showed porn to children! That’s disgusting!

That’s the kneejerk reaction one might have without any of the facts of the case. So, here’s the evidence that essentially got ignored by the judge, the jury, and the so-called “prosecution expert” (a corrupt police detective who has no formal training in information technology, used the results of a computer scanning program that doesn’t detect spyware as evidence, and had previously been charged with misconduct for drinking on the job and creating his own pornography): the administrators did not have any anti-virus or anti-spyware protection on the school’s computers, which ran an old version of Windows and Internet Explorer. The “pornographic material” was a bevy of malicious pop-up ads. The more Amero closed the pop-up windows, the more the ads popped up.

I could go on, but even my computer-illiterate AARP-card-carrying father understands why she’s innocent, so I won’t waste my breath.

The prosecution claimed that she purposely pulled up these images and displayed them to her class. They said nothing about her mental state and emotional reaction once the images appeared, nor her efforts to turn the computer away from the classroom, nor the fact that students had been using the computer unsupervised at the time. They blocked a defense expert from testifying based on a clerical error, and they called no witnesses who were actually versed in information technology.

Unfortunately, that initial kneejerk reaction seems to be as deep as any of this week’s Idiots of the Week were willing to go during her trial. The only thing she did wrong was not turn off the computer - because she was told not to by school staff. That’s a mistake that’s not worth a night in jail, let alone the 40 years in prison she now faces. The case goes to sentencing later this month.

So, congratulations, Idiots of the Week! You ruined a woman’s good name, put her under stress that led to the miscarriage of her child, and reaffirmed the constant miscarriage of justice that takes place in American courts.

Oh, you also reaffirmed the fact that Connecticut sucks.

What, you thought I could get through that rant without mentioning my distaste for that state?

Idiot of the Week runner-up: Former Hampton Bays Elementary School Principal Andrew Albano, who fired a teacher because he thought she was a witch. No, seriously. I wish I was making that up. The American education system is brimming with idiots. And I’m not just talking about the students.

“Oh god, he’s clearly gone insane,” you’re probably saying. “He’s going after the blind?”

No, I’m not going after the blind. I’m just going after an organization that represents them: the National Federation of the Blind, who came out this week against hybrid cars.

Why? Because they’re too quiet.

From the article:

“We generally couldn’t sense that it was there right in front of us, which of course, if we had been standing in the road, would have been running right over us,” [Chris Danielsen, a 36-year-old NFB member] said.

“By the time anybody detected it, if we had actually been standing in the road, it would have taken out three or four people.”

Standing in the road, emphasis obviously mine, is something I always find those damn blind people doing. Just standing out there, in the middle of the road. Hanging out in groups of three or four people, always getting in the way. Those rascally packs of blind people are a dangerous bunch.

In other news, the National Federation of the Deaf has come out against reducing light pollution, because that would make it too dark.

[Runners-up this week: JetBlue, Tim Hardaway, and the American Public for not accepting the dollar coin as a legitimate form of currency, even though it will save our government $500 millon a year.]

Congratulations to this week’s Idiot of the Week: State Senator Carl Kruger. He represents parts of South Brooklyn. And he’s an idiot.

Senator Kruger has proposed a law that would ban using an iPod while crossing a street. The use of cell phones and Blackberries would be banned by the law as well. Some of you might think I’d be completely gung-ho about a law like this, since I constantly complain about bad pedestrians, and I made a tounge-in-cheek comment about banning smoking on sidewalks. But you’d be wrong.

Here’s Senator Kruger’s reasoning for proposing the bill (aside from the fact that he’s obviously a grumpy old man who doesn’t like this new-fangled technology):

Carl Kruger is proposing the ban in response to two recent pedestrian deaths in his district, including a 23-year-old man who was struck and killed last month while listening to his iPod on Avenue T and East 71st Street In Bergen Beach.

Senator Kruger is blaming the iPod for this man’s death! Did he ever think to blame the driver? If a pedestrian is in the crosswalk and has the ”walk” signal, the driver has to yield. That’s the law. Period. That’s especially not a law that can be ignored in New York City, where there are far more pedestrians than there are cars. It doesn’t matter whether the pedestrian is on the phone, typing away on a Blackberry, or listening to The Cars (now that would be ironic) - if a pedestrian has the right of way and gets hit by a car, the driver is the one who has broken the law.

It seems like Senator Kruger would rather blame pedestrians for the city’s traffic problems than blame the drivers. Senator Kruger must love to drive! Why doesn’t he just propose a law that bans people from crossing streets all together? That’s the only way that those poor, innocent drivers will be able to avoid hitting those nasty pedestrians!

By the way, if the “don’t walk” signal is lit and a pedestrian walks into the street and gets hit by a car, there’s already a term for that: it’s called JAYWALKING. And it’s already illegal.

Congratulations, Carl Kruger. You’re this week’s Idiot of the Week.