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We all have bull's-eyes painted on our heads

By HOWARD TROXLER
Published February 27, 2005

This past week, Liberty Middle School in New Tampa got mixed up in the national news with another Liberty Middle School in Orlando, where the principal was alleged to have done something dumb (suspending a student for tossing a rubber band at his teacher).

Deborah Rodgers, principal of the New Tampa school, quickly learned what it was like to be the target of the modern media-and-Web storm. She got hateful e-mails and publicity from all over the country:

You people are seriously a bunch of hysterical morons who have no business molding the minds of children. . . . It's people like you that make government education an American disgrace and laughingstock.

But let's say it had been our school. It would not have mattered a whit whether Rodgers was the greatest principal ever.

Nope. For one day, she was that fascinating creation of our modern, cable TV, talk radio, Internet-driven culture:

The Stupidest Person in the World.

We pick a new one several times a week.

For a couple of days last year, it was a school bus driver in a rural part of Pasco County who allowed a live alligator aboard. Quick, call Bill O'Reilly!

Never mind that the kids (who later were reprimanded) leaped out, taped the 4-foot gator's mouth shut and demanded to reboard. Her choice was to leave them there ("Bus Driver Abandons Kids in Alligator Swamp"), wait an hour or more for help ("Bus Driver Forces Kids to Wait in Alligator Swamp") or do what she did, judging the creature was bound tightly enough to drive it five minutes away and dump it off.

Police officers always are at risk for the title. Here's one from Naples in 2003: Stupidest Cops in the World Shut Down Little Girl's Lemonade Stand.

Except, uh, they didn't. Turns out the kid's mother was a savvy consultant who was in a neighborhood feud. Someone on her side of the fight was already calling the TV stations before the police ever arrived . . .

Sometimes entire groups become the Stupidest People in the World. Like the jury that awarded a woman who spilled McDonald's coffee in her lap $2.8-million. Well, maybe it was the evidence: McDonald's already had paid hundreds of thousands in hush money to people nationwide who had been seriously scalded or burned, while refusing to fix anything.

In 2000, the honor went to a homeowners' association north of Tampa for enforcing the association's rules against the treehouse of a 6-year-old leukemia patient.

But these Stupid Homeowners' Association stories rarely point out that the association has no choice, and can open itself up to lawsuits if it picks and chooses which rules to enforce. Also, such stories rarely point out that the homeowner freely agreed to obey the rules.

Former Vice President Dan Quayle was a frequent target. In 1992, while presiding over a spelling bee, Quayle incorrectly prompted a kid to add the letter "e" to the end of "potato," an instant legend. Rarely reported is that Quayle was simply reading from cards provided by the school, and the word was misspelled on the card.

Yet McKeen, too, served once as the Stupidest Guy in the World. He made innocent comments on the anniversary of Elvis Presley's death about the influences of African-American culture on his music. Somehow this got twisted into: UF Professor Calls Elvis Important Civil Rights Figure. He was ridiculed globally.

Each victim chosen as Stupidest Person in the World holds the title only for a little while, before the ravenous maw of public disdain moves on to the next target. Fortunately, most retain their jobs, self-respect and sanity, although they carry a nice scar.

Meanwhile, the rest of us eagerly turn our contempt toward the next victim, able to judge with instant certitude the total character, intellect and career of some poor sucker we have never met.

[Last modified February 27, 2005, 00:11:08]