RAISING A WARINESS
up the flag pole of idiocy.
From the In What Kind of Fucked Up World Do We Live
file come a few key passages in a Baltimore Sun article about a sixth-grade girl who police say
lied about being sexually assaulted at her middle school last week. The girl
claimed a male construction worker had followed her into the bathroom and
attacked her between classes, but a thorough police investigation determined
that the girl had made up the whole story. By Friday afternoon, the girl's
family was disciplining her at home, school officials were deciding whether to
discipline her at school, and some local parents thought this was a very
important development:
Though relieved to hear the girl hadn't been harmed, parents said the incident helped raise awareness about the potential dangers posed by contractors working in the buildings during the school day.
That sentence -- or, more accurately, the idiotic sentiment behind it -- is so rich with irony that it's a wonder my head didn't explode when I read it. Don't worry if you missed it -- I mean, really, who could possibly process it all in just one pass? -- because I'm compelled to go over it again. If only to be sure I wasn't suffering from some sort of Orwellian hallucination. (Are we at war with Eurasian or Eastasian construction workers this month?)
Though relieved to hear the girl hadn't been harmed, parents said the incident helped raise awareness about the potential dangers posed by contractors working in the buildings during the school day.
That's right, folks. A little girl's lie about something that did not happen -- and, let's face it, is not likely to happen -- helped to raise awareness about the potential dangers posed by the conditions under which it did not happen. A little girl falsely accusing a man of sexual assault helped raise awareness not about false accusations and gender-fueled hysteria (oh, no!), but about the potential dangers of actual sexual assaults unlike this fake one, presumably because without the false accusation, no one in Baltimore County would have known that there really are such things as sexual assaults.
With this (ahem) logic, we should stop trotting out, say, breast cancer survivors to raise awareness of breast cancer and start substituting women -- or maybe even men -- who've never had breast cancer in their lives and, you know, just say they had breast cancer. (If people find out they're all liars and imposters, well, as long as they're as loony as those parents in Baltimore County, it won't make any difference.) With this logic, President Bush's misinformation about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq was really very helpful, because it raised awareness about the potential dangers of genuinely dangerous dictators with weapons of mass destruction. And the cries of the Boy Who Cried Wolf actually helped raise awareness of the potential dangers of wolf attacks. Should they happen. Sometime. Ever.
Now. Lest you think only those nitwit parents found a cautionary tale where none -- or at least a far different one -- existed, you should know that the school has already done its best to instruct all of its students with the rank paranoia of some of its parents:
[A school spokeswoman] stressed that while police had concluded that nothing had happened to the girl, the school had made changes in response to safety concerns. Children were instructed to travel in pairs, more teachers were in the hallways between classes and more police were stationed at the school.
That's right, folks. The school instructed children to travel in pairs, sent more teachers into the hallways between classes, and even brought more police officers into the school -- all because nothing fucking happened. Or, more accurately, because a little girl lied about something happening.
If this is not both metaphor and epitaph for our times -- a people and a bureaucracy so uncritically paranoid, so fearful of looking like they have not done enough to combat that which almost surely will not happen, that they even overreact to what they know for a fact did not happen -- then I don't know what is. And unless those cops and teachers and pairs of children are armed with lie detectors and freshly infused with the common sense that so regularly escapes us all, you can be sure they will see more rapists behind every stall, more terrorists beneath every desk, until the only thing they have yet to fear is truth itself.
Though relieved to hear the girl hadn't been harmed, parents said the incident helped raise awareness about the potential dangers posed by contractors working in the buildings during the school day.
That sentence -- or, more accurately, the idiotic sentiment behind it -- is so rich with irony that it's a wonder my head didn't explode when I read it. Don't worry if you missed it -- I mean, really, who could possibly process it all in just one pass? -- because I'm compelled to go over it again. If only to be sure I wasn't suffering from some sort of Orwellian hallucination. (Are we at war with Eurasian or Eastasian construction workers this month?)
Though relieved to hear the girl hadn't been harmed, parents said the incident helped raise awareness about the potential dangers posed by contractors working in the buildings during the school day.
That's right, folks. A little girl's lie about something that did not happen -- and, let's face it, is not likely to happen -- helped to raise awareness about the potential dangers posed by the conditions under which it did not happen. A little girl falsely accusing a man of sexual assault helped raise awareness not about false accusations and gender-fueled hysteria (oh, no!), but about the potential dangers of actual sexual assaults unlike this fake one, presumably because without the false accusation, no one in Baltimore County would have known that there really are such things as sexual assaults.
With this (ahem) logic, we should stop trotting out, say, breast cancer survivors to raise awareness of breast cancer and start substituting women -- or maybe even men -- who've never had breast cancer in their lives and, you know, just say they had breast cancer. (If people find out they're all liars and imposters, well, as long as they're as loony as those parents in Baltimore County, it won't make any difference.) With this logic, President Bush's misinformation about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq was really very helpful, because it raised awareness about the potential dangers of genuinely dangerous dictators with weapons of mass destruction. And the cries of the Boy Who Cried Wolf actually helped raise awareness of the potential dangers of wolf attacks. Should they happen. Sometime. Ever.
Now. Lest you think only those nitwit parents found a cautionary tale where none -- or at least a far different one -- existed, you should know that the school has already done its best to instruct all of its students with the rank paranoia of some of its parents:
[A school spokeswoman] stressed that while police had concluded that nothing had happened to the girl, the school had made changes in response to safety concerns. Children were instructed to travel in pairs, more teachers were in the hallways between classes and more police were stationed at the school.
That's right, folks. The school instructed children to travel in pairs, sent more teachers into the hallways between classes, and even brought more police officers into the school -- all because nothing fucking happened. Or, more accurately, because a little girl lied about something happening.
If this is not both metaphor and epitaph for our times -- a people and a bureaucracy so uncritically paranoid, so fearful of looking like they have not done enough to combat that which almost surely will not happen, that they even overreact to what they know for a fact did not happen -- then I don't know what is. And unless those cops and teachers and pairs of children are armed with lie detectors and freshly infused with the common sense that so regularly escapes us all, you can be sure they will see more rapists behind every stall, more terrorists beneath every desk, until the only thing they have yet to fear is truth itself.
Posted: Mon - January 14, 2008 at 02:27 PM
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Published On: Jan 16, 2009 04:50 PM
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Published On: Jan 16, 2009 04:50 PM