The bronze medal this week goes to Perkins Rowe. Who could have foreseen that no one would in the Baton Rouge area would be interested in dropping 250k for a condo with terrible parking and no view? Well, everyone is who. The lack of foresight in the Perkins Rowe planning is probably the root cause of the development going under, and for that, the developers deserve the first ever bronze turd award.
The silver medal for this week is awarded to Kevin Lemoine, former principal of Zachary High School. Mr. Lemoine showed his brilliant understanding of the law earlier in the week when he filed suit against the Zachary Community School Board for wrongful termination. Only he wasn't terminated. In a sworn statement, Lemoine asserted that he voluntarily stepped down from his post as principal because of pressure to pressure Zachary's head football coach to lobby for the Superintendent's son's selection to the all-district team. What really happened though was that Lemoine was being pressured to fire a football coach who was breaking school board rules. Lemoine refused and was therefore informed that his contract would not be renewed at the end of term. Perhaps taking a page from the Sarah Palin playbook, Lemoine is claiming that other people are responsible for things that he's done wrong. Now you may want to check this out on your own as you could make the argument that I'm biased, Lemoine, after all served as my principal while I was at ZHS. I didn't like him that much, but that was only because he violated my Fifth Amendment rights by performing an illegal search of my school bag. But I promise, he deserves the silver turd independently of my dislike of him.
And finally, the first ever Great Golden Turd goes to (former) Officer Justin Barrett (formerly) of the Boston Police. In a recent e-mail, Barrett described Harvard Professor Louis Gates as a "banana eating jungle-monkey". The e-mail continues:
"I am not a racist, but I am prejudiced towards stupid people... He [Gates] has indeed transcended back to a bumbling jungle monkey."
According to sources this disgusting diatribe was laced with numerous grammatical and spelling errors.
It is one thing, one very stupid thing, to suggest that a tenured professor at one of America's most prestigious colleges is stupid. It is quite another to demonstrate that you are not only a racist, but an idiot racist, and then pretend not to be. Just because one prefaces a statement with claims not to be a racist doesn't mean anything. One does not get to redefine racism simply to paint themselves as something other than the monster that they actually are. The fact that one would feel the need to preface a statement in such a way speaks volumes about that person's image of themselves in relation to what society views as acceptable. In this case, if it looks like a duck and quacks like an ass hole, it probably is. Barrett absolutely looks and sounds like an ass hole, and that is a perception that appears to be well-deserved. This is all without mentioning the objections I have as an amateur philosopher to the use of the word transcend. This idiot doesn't realize that people don't transcend. Transcendent things transcend, people are finite and thus are inherently non-transcendent. I would also point out that Gates has never ever been a "jungle monkey" so for him to "transcend back" to being one is nonsensical. If anyone in this whole ridiculous story has proven to be an animal it is Barrett, as this e-mail shows him for what he truly is, an ape.
