As the

"Snowstorm of the Century" was approaching

Georgia last Thursday night, I was watching the local

news for some much needed comic relief and - bang!

- there it was. Newscaster John Pruitt was giving

pointers for "Snow Jam 2000" and he said that

if your power goes out, you should not bring your

barbecue grill into the house to cook your food. No

irony, no wit, just a straight-faced tip for, I guess,

those Super Bowl tailgaters, who are snowed in. What

another great example of dumbing down for stupid America.

My belief system is the

farthest thing from evolution but if natural selection

has any validity it would mean that somebody so dumb as

to light an outdoor grill inside a house should not live

to carry on his species. Some people are stupid but

should we all be responsible for that? Should we all have

to suffer through monosyllabic newscasts because some guy

in a trailer in Loganville is still using a can opener

because he can't figure out the mechanics of the

"pop-top"? I don't think so, but we do.

The whole "dumbing

down" movement started way back with the onset of

the emergency dialing system. Public service

announcements that told people, when in trouble, call

"nine-eleven" had to be yanked from the air. It

seems a rash of doofuses (or are they doofi?) called in

to say they had no "eleven" on their telephone.

Quickly the public service announcements were changed to

say "nine-one-one."

Ever since, we have all had

to read through moronic disclaimers and instructions

aimed at those with the IQ less than room temperature:

Umbrellas with instructions like, "works best when

fully opened" or Tabasco Sauce bottles that say,

"Keep out of eyes." Gas pumps that say "do

not drink," and Styrofoam coffee cups that say,

"contains hot liquid, do not carry between your legs

while driving at a high rate of speed, being the stupid,

old, trembling, idiot that you are!"

We have reached such depths

of "moronocity" because of one deadly

combination: the stupid person and the lawyer. At one

point in time, when stupid people did stupid things, they

didn't run out and sue the grocery store or the hospital

or the school system for those institutions' inability to

compensate for stupid acts. At one point in time, people

had enough pride to admit they were stupid, or friends or

family around them would at least help them know it.

Then appeared the liability

lawyer.

Like the elderly woman who

won all that cash from McDonald's because she was burned

legs, stupid people started hooking up with attorneys and

began suing every business with money. So over the past

decade or two companies have been writing disclaimers to

protect themselves from every dolt who owned a set of

yellow pages.

It is sort of like the true

story of the family in Chicago who is suing the school

system because their son was thrown off the football team

for drinking (twice and a DUI). The parents of the boy

claim their son is an alcoholic and since alcoholism is a

disease, the school system is discriminating against

their son and can lawfully be sued under the Americans

with Disabilities Act. That law protects handicapped

persons from being treated unfairly and with prejudice. I

guess being stupid is protected there too.

Nevertheless, life goes on

and the evolutionary process just isn't working fast

enough.