I happened to catch a news report the other day about some idiot who almost killed himself performing the most insane stunt imaginable, all for some stupid Jackass ripoff video he was making with his friends. (Here’s a link to the story c/o Obscure Store.)
The Sheriff’s Office spokesman echoes, I think, the sentiments of the average well-adjusted person with the following statement:
>”He’s an 18-year-old and can make his own decisions … I hope that everybody he sees on television or movie he wouldn’t duplicate. To willfully do something like that and be injured, it makes you shake your head.”
On the contrary, the idiot’s mother, who on the basis of the following statement must be where he got his idiot genes from, blurted to a TV reporter:
>”This is what I feel is so important for the public to understand … All his pranks come from the ‘Jackass’ movie … Granted what my kid did was stupid, but they are impressionable.”
So what are we to do then, _mom_? Do you want everyone else to make concessions for your poor baby because he’s _impressionable_? Pardon my French, but that’s so much bullshit, lady.
You know it as well as I do: Jackass did not make your son jump off a roof. (In fact, I’ve never seen them attempt anything so risky; your idiot son did that all by himself, and he paid the price for his idiocy.)
It’s the cop-out attitudes of fools like her — combined with the readiness of many to placate such people, to suffer such fools gladly, because _it’s the PC thing to do_ — that’s sending us all down the slippery slope to oblivion.