Jackass Detector

You may have heard of Carl Sagan's Baloney Detection Kit. His 'kit' outlines methods we all can reliably use to detect...baloney...as Carl so gently describes it. If, at this very moment, you are scratching your head while saying, "Carl who? Baloney wha...?," you need to immediately go to your nearest bookstore and purchase a copy of Sagan's Demon Haunted World. The moment you arrive back home, sit down and read it from cover to cover. You will not regret it. You may even write to thank me.

After you settle down and stop gawking at Sagan's brilliant and provoking word-smithing, feel free to come back and finish reading today's blog entry. At that point I will no longer fear exposing you to the jackasses and the ridiculous ideas they have conjured up, all of which I'm about to discuss.

For those remaining (or those of you returning), let's get started! In this installment, I'd like to show you a surefire method to detect a jackass--defined as an individual who frequently disseminates...baloney...in a careless and idiotic manner. I'm trying to be Sagan-like-gentle, here.

Unfortunately, this method of jackass detection usually requires that a truly horrific event occur somewhere in the world. Well known tragedies include 9/11, the Asian-Tsunami, and currently, the tragic shooting at Virgina Tech.

During calamities such as these the primary rule for jackass detection is simple; jackasses will quickly proclaim that a group, lifestyle, activity, philosophy, or political persuasion is to blame for the tragedy. Take note that jackasses do not limit themselves to this cursory list and may blame a wide variety of people, places, or ideas beyond those mentioned here.

You can accurately calculate how severe of a jackass the individual is based on, a) how quickly after the tragic event the jackass makes their blame-announcement, and b) how much time passes between the jackass' blame-announcement and the point it becomes known who or what is the actual cause for the tragedy.

In the case of tragedies caused by natural events, such as hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, or tidal waves, the jackass making the blame-announcement should be considered a jackass of red-alert status automatically; be sure to place such individuals on the very top of your warning lists, and distribute those to friends, family, and complete strangers immediately.

Permit me to provide a few examples of red-alert status jackasses detected as a result of the Virgina Tech shooting:

The first to set off my personal jackass detector was Jack Thompson. By way of an appearance on Fox News (a mere five hours after the shooting) and later by press release, Thompson proceeded to blame video games and video game violence as an underlying and probable cause for the shooting. For those familiar with Thompson, this comes as little surprise, particularly since no information about the killer, his motivation, or his video game habits were known to any extent. So, clearly that means video games are to blame.

He was followed up by none other than Dr. Phil, a jackass of entirely different strain, but clearly capable of holding such a title without issue. He also blamed video games while speaking with Larry King on Larry King Live, stating, "We're going to have to start addressing those issues [ violence in video games ] and recognizing that the mass murderers of tomorrow are the children of today that are being programmed with this massive violence overdose."

Okie dokie, Doc!

It doesn't stop there, however. Maybe your jackass detector picked up an alert on this next one; Ken Ham. You know Ken, right? Also known in some circles as "creationist jackass"?

Anyhow, he whipped up an article speaking on the tragedy, explaining, "We live in an era when public high schools and colleges have all but banned God from science classes. In these classrooms, students are taught that the whole universe, including plants and animals--and humans--arose by natural processes. Naturalism (in essence, atheism) has become the religion of the day and has become the foundation of the education system (and Western culture as a whole). The more such philosophy permeates the culture, the more we would expect to see a sense of purposelessness and hopelessness that pervades people's thinking."

Is it just me, or is he outright blaming atheism for this? Clearly, all atheists are purposeless and hopeless--utterly despondent about the pointless nature of reality and their equally pointless existence within it--so much so that Ken is betting that Cho Seung-Hui, the young man identified today as the shooter, is either an atheist or so influenced by godless science propagandized by schools such as Virginia Tech that he became irrevocably depressed, generating his inevitable urge to commit mass murder.

You know, the same thing that happens to all immoral and uncontrollable atheists. At least, he'd like you to think as much, even if he doesn't really believe such tripe himself. (Not that he doesn't believe it, mind you. Ken has demonstrated with a terrifying sense of frequency that he is capable of believing the ridiculous...and I don't just mean Jesus!)

To wash his hands from any insensibility that you may think you just heard, Ham continues, "I'm not at all saying the person who committed these murders at Virginia Tech was driven by a belief in millions of years or evolution. I don't know why this person did what he did, except the obvious: that it was a result of sin."

Riiiight. Let me just ... place ... your ... name ... there, top of the list.

P.S. My jackass detector went off again--just enough to give me notice to start looking deeper and I'm yet to confirm it fully--but it appears that the Church of Scientology may be blaming this incident on, you guessed it, "psychiatric drug connections."