Stupid Is As Stupid Does...

There does seem to be a lot of it going around lately. Cases in point:

First we have Rosie O'Donnell, responding in her typical knee-jerk lesbian fashion to the puzzling Clay Aiken putting a hand over Kelly Ripa's mouth on "Regis & Kelly".

I say "puzzling" because I have no idea who Mr. Aiken even IS, really ,let alone if he's gay, except I hear that he was on that, yes, stupid show I never watch. In the little clips I've seen in the news since the incident, he seems bland, talentless and interchangeable with others of his ilk (meaning people who emerge from that stupid show), but that's no business of mine.

Anyway, you've probably heard how Kelly, whom I enjoy watching with Reege of a late-to-rise morning at Casa de Mojo, was saying something and all of a sudden had a big fat Clay Aiken hand over her mouth. She remonstrated, as who wouldn't, by saying she didn't know where that hand had been.

Quite reasonably, in my opinion; and everyone laughed, and the matter seemed over.

Until O'Donnell opened her monstrous and unedited yap and grandly announced that Ripa had been homophobic to say that. To which I reply, WTF???

First, apparently Mr. Aiken's sexuality is undeclared by him, and if he IS gay, then the ignorant, self-absorbed, classless individual from Commack, Long Island (we sneer at Commack in my LI hometown...) just outed him. Way to go, Rosie, ya jerk!

But it really doesn't matter which team Aiken plays for. How the gaudy hell is saying you don't know where someone's hand has been "homophobic"??? Yeesh.

Well, you know, you DON'T know. That hand could have been picking up dog poop, or performing other insalubrious personal-grooming chores, or covered in germs from a current cold or flu. Nothing gay about it.
Ripa was quite correct to comment on the possible uncleanliness of the appendage and equally within her rights not to want it over her mouth. Gay or not, Aiken's a guy, and guys are known to not always wash their hands when they should. I'm just sayin'. I'd have said the same as Kelly did, guy OR girl, objecting merely to the hand's presence and immediately previous sanitary history.

I have both gay and lesbian friends who were TOTALLY exasperated at O'Donnell's immediate loud-mouthed inconsidered erroneous fingerpointing. It's allllllways reflexively accusing with agendists and stubbornly blinkered people like her---be they gays or Republicans or Islamists---and GOD is it annoying.
O'Donnell, it's not always, or even most times, against gayness. (Or indeed Republicanism or Islam.) Get a grip.

We heard the next day that Kelly muffles Reege sometimes in similar fashion, but that's different. He's her on-air sidekick, with whom she is apparently on good and friendly terms. Aiken was a stranger, and had no business taking the liberty of clamping his possibly unwashed paw over her mouth. So, Rosie, just shut the fuck up, 'kay?

And then we have Michael Richards, aka Cosmo Kramer, publicly out of control, ranting and raving, using the n-word, in front of a passel of club patrons with cellphones. Now this I find genuinely offensive, though in fairness I must point out that if black persons use the n-word about one another a million times a day, in rap and in speech, I think they really aren't allowed to get their knickers too much in a twist if the word is used about them. Again, just sayin'.

And I think that word is vile no matter WHO uses it.

But, like Mel Gibson and his anti-Semitic rant, that kind of thing doesn't come flying down out of nowhere. No matter how much drink you've taken. No matter how many people heckle you. Most people, when they're drunk or nettled, DON'T start immediately spewing generalized racist vomit. The words and mindset have to be there, deep down, before they erupt into public view like a pustulent zit. Not a pretty sight, and not the product of a shining soul.

And I'm not even going to mention that true excremental excrescence, the one whose initials are those of happy little citrus juice. The less said about him the better. I hope the ground opens up and swallows him, and I won't be the least surprised if his children go all Menendez on his lying murdering ass one day.

What IS it with people? I don't think such blind and staggering stupidity is necessarily a function of being famous, or infamous. Plenty of regular old sorts do the same thing every day. It's just that BECAUSE they're famous, the perpetrators of these uncharming lapses get national and international attention. But maybe so-called celebrities think they have free rein to be offensive because their fame will insulate them from repercussions. And sad to say, it all so often does.

We didn't think like that back in the day, mostly because if we did stupid public things we were immediately called on it by somebody---the police, or the Brain Police, or our mates or families or friends. There were indeed repercussions and consequences. Nowadays, the thinking, if one can call it that, seems to be Hey, let all the mental sewage just come bubbling out like toxic seep, no harm no foul.

Well, I say plenty foul, my legions. And plenty harm, too.