Stupid is as stupid does

I was thinking this morning about the dumbest thing I ever heard of in my life.

Hmmmm.

There was the time a politician gave me an ad for a newspaper at which I was publisher; I perused it, saw some glaring misconceptions and false statements and refused to run it. 

An hour later, he returned with his lawyer and both men insisted I had to run the ad: “Freedom of the press!” I said, “Follow me,” and led them to the newspaper press room. “See that press,” I said, with a smile on my face, “Go buy you one of them sumbitches and you have freedom of the press.”

Then there was the time three women from NOW (National Organization of Women) came into the newspaper and demanded an apology for a column I had written about a certain political situation. Obviously, I was lost. A nice lady showed me the column and I had written, “There is more pork in Washington-on-the-Deficit than a fat sow at slaughter time.”

I didn’t understand their concern and said so. “Sow. You used the term ‘sow.’ Why did you have to say ‘sow.’ Why didn’t you say ‘boar’?”

After I picked my jaw up off the floor, I said: “I grew up in rural South Arkansas. At slaughter time, the biggest pig on the place was a sow. Now, if you don’t mind, and even if you do, get out of my office and don’t come back until you have a real issue to discuss.”

Oh, another time a woman came into the newspaper griping about how the paper messed up her husband’s obituary. (Actually, the funeral home messed up the information but passing the buck at a time when someone is grieving and mad is not the correct business-to-customer approach.)

After assuring her we would reprint the obituary and make all requested corrections, she got madder. “You and all your people are incompetent. I want the editor and anyone who touched my husband's obituary fired. FIRED!”

Then she started cussing and knocking stuff off my desk. I called in my circulation manager as a witness and told the lady to please leave my office. “Ma’m, it’s obvious we can not correct this wrong and I’m sorry. But you have stepped over the line. If you are a subscriber of this newspaper, I an canceling your subscription and will return your money in full. And, as of this minute, I am instructing my circulation department to fix all of our vending machines so it will not accept your money.”

After the lady left, the circulation manager looked at me askance and said, “Fix the machines so it won’t accept HER money?”

“Well, I was mad and it sounded good at the time.”

Sounded good at the time.

Somewhere in the bowels of the National Rifle Association (NRA), someone in some cubicle at some point in time came up with the idea of making available to the public a “shooting” game that let folks blast away at targets with an AK-47 at … coffins, with “kill” shots marked at the head and middle of each coffin.

This idea sprang full blown from the NRA brain trust and the "game" was made available to the public exactly one month after the Sandy Hook massacre in which 26 people, including 20 children, died.

Callous. Unthinking. Uncaring. Arrogant. In-your-face stupidity.

Pick one. Pick them all.

The NRA played this card and it will prove to be the worse decision in the history of the organization.