This has been done before many times, in assorted forums, but I heard one today that I just have to share, but doesn’t quite fit in the more current threads. (Mods, if I’m wrong, please move or close this, as you see fit)
I thought I had heard the most ignorant comment of the week yesterday morning. A un-beloved (WASP) coworker asked the office at large “What’s The Masons? They’re like the KKK, right?” My response was something along the lines of “Well, they’re pale, just like the Elks or the VFW. They do a childrens hospitals thing – they’re the guys in funny hats in clown cars at circuses to raise money for sick kids. You know – the Shriners? Same group, Shriners are just the really involved Masons” (yes, lame & incoherent, but it’s a new office for me, and I’m trying to get along with even the dumbest of my new coworkers.)
I was so wrong.
First thing this morning, by way of commenting about the VA Tech shootings, a different cow-orker declared that “we oughta send all those immigrants back to Red China, because youse can’t trust 'em in colleges.”
I had no immediate response, solely because my poor little brain exploded all over the break room. Hate, geographical ignorance, general idiocy & bad grammar, all in one sentence.
What stupiduty has made your jaw drop or your brain explode lately?
Doesn’t exactly qualify as “lately”. More like 15 years ago, but is still the stupidest thing I’ve heard to date.
Worked at local hospital at the time. Lunch in the cafeteria with several co-workers from my department. A patient goes to a table across the room with his tray. It is known to our group that he has AIDS because we had a need to know. (Years before HIPAA)
Busybody ol biddy sitting next to me. Loudly.
What’s HE doing in here exposing US to HIS AIDS!!?
My barely bitten off response.
Right here, right now, your ignorance is more dangerous than his AIDS.
All Shriners are Masons, but not all Masons are Shriners.
Bobo AF&AM, AASR(sj), past AAONMS (aka “Shriner”)
“I’m not sending my children to any school with an ESL program, he’s too smart to associate with people that can’t even speak the language” - heard at my last job.
My manager recently got married is starting to talk about having a baby. There is a specific date about 10 or so months from now that she wants the baby to be born before, so she was trying to work out how long she had before it was too late. Her first question was something along the lines of “How long does it take a baby to be born? It’s 10 months right?”
My reaction: :dubious:
I thought she was joking, but no such luck.
This has been said before: All Shriners are Masons; not all Masons are Shriners. This has been said before in this very thread. If I had done a thorough reading, I wouldn’t have posted this.
Both the KKK question and the pregnancy question don’t sound that stupid to me. I could ask questions like those.
KKK and Masons have at least three things in common. Both are secret clubs which you can only join if you are invited to; both have elaborate rituals, parafernalia and costumes; both are adult-men only organisations. Both even have a semi-religious background.
That there are also really BIG differences, (KKK white, racist, violent, American South, and a banned organization) doesn’t mean that there are also similarities and your co-worker might have referred to those.
As for the pregnancy question, many physicians count the duration of the pregnancy in weeks starting from the first day of the last menstrual period. That adds two weeks to the standard “nine months”. And pregnancies can also last longer or shorter then average. All factors she might have taken into consideration when asking that apparent stupid question.
I myself was on a trip to England years ago, when the people with me talked about visiting the town of Stratford upon Avon. Of course I knew Shakespeare was born there, but as I knew there are very few facts known about Shakespeares personal life, except his writings, I wondered what could be visited in the town. I half suspected the Tourist Office had just dubbed the most oldish Elizabethan looking house in Stratford into “birth house of Shakespeare” to lure in tourists, and if that were the case I’d rather spend my afternoon somewhere else. All these thoughts prompted me to ask “What can be seen in Stratford upon Avon, then?” and I got the same looks you probably threw the above mentioned co-workers.
So that is another question that might look stupid but isn’t really.
Just a couple of years ago, I was sitting in class at my university. I was wearing my Diego Garcia Square & Compass Club t-shirt. The professor was explaining ~ic to the class as an example of some linguistic principle. He listed a few words with that suffix, including masonic. The young lady behind me said, “Oh, you mean that false religion?” I turned around and asked her if she was aware that most people came to college to eradicate ignorance.
I guess that’s second to an old friend’s wife. She asked me what LDS believe. When I began to tell her, she interrupted with, “No, you don’t. You worship the Devil.”
About 25 years ago, while I was stationed at Fort Benning, Georgia, two other Specialists were yakking. I was trying to concentrate on my work. One of them said to the other, “I can’t believe we have to work with that foreigner.” She was referring to another Specialist who happened to be from Agana, Guam. I looked at the ignorant sod and told her, “She’s not a foreigner. She’s from an American territory.” The stupid wretch stared at me, then turned to her partner-in-stupidity, and uttered, “Children should be seen and not heard.” I was senior to them in both years and time in grade. I told the one with the stupid mouth to go to hell. She got up and came back in a few minutes with the project officer. He tried to tell me that I was out of line. I politely informed him that if he thought so, he needed to write me up, but to also be fully prepared for everything that was said to be trotted out. Funny thing, I never saw those two idiots again while I was working on that project.
Yeah, Ignorance is like a diamond. It’s timeless and just about as hard to break.
By the way, a few Prince Hall Lodge Masons are pale, but most aren’t.
Next time you see that idiot, ask him politely if he thinks {insert foreign group} are stupid. When he says, “Yes, of course,” politely ask the next question: “Do you speak {that nation’s language}?” He’ll respond with, “No.” Then kind of innocently ask, “How’s it feel to be dumber than {foreign group}?”
Not such a stupid remark, either. Kid has friends who smoke pot occasionally. They are not overdoing it and our kid can’t see it doing them any harm. Then he hears a teacher painting the usual bleak picture of kids "doing drugs, even just once " and ending up in the proverbial gutter and yes, pot is a drug too. Kid has a hard time rhyming this with what he knows from his own experience and asks this question. Why is that stupid?
Here’s a remark even *I *would label as unthinking. Friend of mine, intelligent guy in his thirties, asking in all seriousness if he is “uncool” for not travelling around the world all the time. I’m translating, the Dutch word was “burgerlijk”, meaning " square" " bourgeois" “average Joe’ish”. What, is there some official scientifically developed cool’o meter developed by the government?
Nitpick - while the KKK does have roots in the American South, unfortunately it has spread its tentacles across the US and probably beyond. To claim that it’s a Southern only entity is an oversimplification, such as limiting Skinheads to the UK or the Nation of Islam to the North (Chicago).
I honestly have to ask both of you, is this jaw-droppingly stupid because she didn’t know the answer, or because she said 10 months instead of 9? Because if you ask anyone in this country how long it takes, they’ll tell you 10 months. I don’t know how it works, but when my wife used her counting system and I used mine, we ended up calculating the same due date for our kid.
justrob, I didn’t know if it was possible under US-law to legally outlaw and prosecute KKK-like organizations. But as that fact had no consequences for the point I was making, I was too lazy to look it up. According to Wiki your nitpick is correct; it isn’t against the law to proclaim yourself a KKK-member. But I suppose and hope that the organization is currently in all legal ways discouraged, socially, morally and legally, and that is what I meant by “banned”.