Twisted as they are twisted: the language people have no problem using and what it says about them, simpleton hoops, Alison Overholt

Thursday 7/2/26

People will make any excuse for someone twisted as they are twisted. Sick as they are sick. Immoral as they are Immoral. Evil as they are evil. For example, Joshua Boger with David Sedaris.

It's unbelievable to me--it shouldn't be, but, again, one feels like it must be said--how people use t-a-r-d, as in "retard." They'll casually, conversationally stick it at the ends of words.

How can you not know how disgusting this is? How can you be that bad of a human? You're a moral failure even in this? Or do these people know and not care?

I was talking to someone the the other day, and they did it, no problem, as if there wasn't a thing in the world wrong with it. It's so cruel. People reveal themselves to be garbage in less of the time than it takes to snap their fingers. "I am a bag of shit," they say, just like that.

How do they expect you to respond? There's no shame? It's cool? The presumption is that you're like this as well, because people expect you to be like them. Who wouldn't be like this? Remember what we said yesterday? What you are = what is considered good/right/just/the way to be in our world now. That's how it works for most people within their own head spaces. It's not about right and wrong, good and bad. It's about similarity. That's where they're coming from. That's the person they are.

The arrogance of ignorance. The ignorance of arrogance. Arrogance and ignorance are often both presumptuous. People are arrogant in how ignorant they're perfectly fine with being.

It's so hurtful. To people dealing with things completely out of their control. And their families, their friends, the people who help them and care for them. To be talked about that way? To be regarded as this ultra negative of a human being through no fault of your own? To have your child regarded that way? Your sibling?

People are sufficiently bad at communicating now that they have to try and artificially engineer conversations. They're not smart enough to have an organic one. They'll default to playing twenty questions, or they'll pick a topic, as if this were an exercise. A prompt. Which isn't a natural way to communicate.

"Tell me something about yourself" is the kind of terms a small-minded, simple person--the bad kind of simple--thinks in and deploys as social technique. It is also inorganic.

"I like green M&Ms best."

It's like, happy now? Was that useful? What was the point? This isn't a setting conducive--or maybe I should say, a set-up conducive--to soul-baring, or the proffering of a highly personal truth straight from the soul. It's a trivia request. It's a generic prompt in search of and suited for a generic answer. Why would the person of depth and significance waste their time and energy in jumping through that hoop? The simpleton hoop.

These people are this way because they are themselves a kind of living dearth. A complex person of substance can't play this game, won't play this game. It's a fool's errand of a game. Because they understand that some tossed off trivia tidbit doesn't convey anything about who one truly is.

I was playing basketball once. Guy comes over, asks if I want to play one-on-one. I say sure. Couple minutes into the game, he leans in close to me and asks, "You ever play with Blacks?" as a segue way to making vile and racist remarks, of course.

I think of this guy when people put t-a-r-d at the end of words. Thinking it's normal and fine and not objectionable, let alone vile. The perceived permissibility of it, and, yes, the arrogance and ignorance; the narcissism that you must be like they are. And that whatever they are, whatever their views, this is the way to be and how to "think." They are the way of things.

Is it possible not to be aware of what the usage of this term--this slur--means? Or is it likelier that someone knows and doesn't care about being needlessly hurtful? It's like a messed up chicken and egg type of question.

Alison Overholt of ESPN the Magazine would talk this way to me. She'd say, "I know it's retarded, but..." I was aghast. Utterly brainless this person and horrible. "It's so retarded..." Just saying it. Dumb as a pigeon. With all the depth of a cracker. But attractive. And one of them. Completely nonthreatening to the fragile egos of these kinds of people in this field. Knew how to play their game of utter vacuity. A game of moving around empty parcels of air and pretending there's solidity in them thar sacks.

So for this person, it was like, "Here, have this high-paying job" and "Can we get you another even more high-paying job?" Same person saying this to me right in an office. I looked her up just now to make sure I was spelling her first name correctly, and I see "Alison was the first woman to run a national general interest sports magazine."

She teaches at Columbia now. Because of course.

If only people knew. It's always a case of that. Then again, if they're that way themselves, well, as we were saying.