Was that Lorin Stein at Fenway Park the other night? Did Katie Roiphe get him a ticket?

Friday 7/24/26

A rule in society, to which there are few exceptions, is to defend that which is bad and that which is stupid, if anything is to be defended (and upheld) at all. Ours is a world of inversion in which unnatural order is the order of the day. Where good is bad, bad is good, not funny is funny, funny isn't even understood, mediocrity is sublimity, sublimity doesn't exist and wouldn't be noticed and understood if it did.

Whenever I see someone smart enough, if you can call it that, and brave enough, ditto, to say something sane, they are almost always then hammered by everyone else. That is, the person saying the sole thing that makes you go, "Obviously that's true," if you're not a very stupid and bad person, is treated by the masses as the enemy. By some unit that represents the masses.

I'll give you an example. Someone parked their moped here in Boston on the sidewalk on Boylston Street right up against the memorial for the victims of the 2013 Marathon bombing.

First of all, it's illegal to park a moped on a sidewalk. This is also a busy sidewalk. Along with the sidewalk on Newbury Street, it's perhaps the busiest in the entire city.

Someone mentioned the above on Reddit. That another person had parked their moped on the sidewalk on Boylston Street, and, what's more, in the space of this memorial. Basically they were saying, have some respect, don't be such an entitled ass.

What do you think happened? If you know how the world works, you know what happened before I tell you. If you know how people are now. If you don't know these things, but you know how people should be if they're not trying to be outright pieces of trash, then your answer is almost certain to be wrong. Because people in that latter camp would think that the group response would be one of "hear hear."

It wasn't "hear hear." It was many people calling this person who pointed this out the bad person. As they defended the moped person. Made all manner of excuse for them. "Maybe they were in a hurry." Not even good excuses. "How are they supposed to know what happened there."

There were limbs on the ground on that day. And it wasn't like four limbs. This was thirteen years ago. "Maybe he didn't live here then." You had to have lived in Boston in 2013 to know about a terrorist attack on one of its main streets during the middle of one of its most famous, historic events when huge numbers of people gather? This is an example of why someone came up with the phrase, "Have you been living under a rock?" No one you know ever said anything about it to you? What do you know, then? Do you know what street you're on? What city you're in? Whether you're clothed or not? What, if anything, registers? Can you see that fireball up in the sky? Do you know what we call that?

We defend being completely, essentially willfully ignorant. We'll work at nothing we don't feel we have to work at, save, it seems, in the making of excuses. Not just for ourselves. Sure, we almost always make the most for ourselves. That's our specialty. McDonald's sells more hamburgers than fish sandwiches, right? But we'll do the work of making excuses for others, too. As if it were a side business to our own excuse making. Our arrogance and our ignorance are basically one and the same. Doesn't matter how wrong something or someone is. People will still come rally to the defense. So long as they don't see that person as being better than they are, smarter, braver, whatever the case may be. But if that person sucks? If that thing sucks? They rally to the cause.

Eventually, someone else stepped in and said, "Stop, grow up, don't make excuses for any of this," and was also berated.

Most people are stupid. Most people are bad people. Therefore, most people defend other stupid and bad people, and being stupid and bad. It's what is "right" to them. This is what they think of as just.

You take away the memorial, and you're still in the wrong for parking your moped on a city sidewalk, which is also illegal.

Here's another example, which I saw the other day:

Hi y’all, lifelong fan here and I’ve been going to Fenway for three decades. I wanted to post this here in case this spurs anyone to help someone in the future.

This week, during Friday’s doubleheader (night game) I was harassed by a married man and father of three for the majority of the game. It was the first game I went to alone. How do I know he was a married father of three? I listened to him tell his friends about how much daycare costs, stories about his wife, etc.

About three innings in he started asking me questions. By the seventh he was rubbing my arms and back and saying he loved me and begging me to keep his phone number. Security saw and did nothing. Everyone else around me, his friends who knew he was married with children included, did nothing. I was in an aisle seat, so it was very visible.

I left. But please. Don’t make Fenway into this. It should be a place for everyone to have fun without worrying about this kind of harassment. I hope this somehow reaches that man’s wife too, because his behavior was absolutely deplorable, and I feel incredibly sad for her and her children.

Should be clear cut, right? There's nothing to debate here. This isn't "up for grabs" morally. This isn't the morality version of one of those fifty-fifty balls you're asking your receiver to go up and get. And if you see this as a gray area, might as well cut your eyes out of their sockets. But, of course, the comments attacked this woman.

I know what a person wants to say: that's those evil men and toxic masculinity for you. And yes, it's that. But it's something beyond and bigger than that, too. It's how we are now. We defend what is wrong. We rage against, attack, mock, gang up on, what is right and who is right. Our society tries to make bad things the good things.

Again: Most people are stupid and most people are bad people. Hardly anyone can think. There is next to no introspection. As a result, virtually everyone is going to prioritize and attempt to elevate themselves, what they are, and that means--especially because there's no thinking and intelligence and sense of accountability or interest in or understanding of right and wrong--that those bad qualities will be transmogrified into the "proper" way to act and to think.

The only thinking that people do now is group think, which isn't thinking. It's a matter of alignment.

We praise and venerate pure garbage; garbage things, being garbage. Whether that's in "media," the so-called arts, celebrity culture, who we deify, and in how we speak and act.

No one is going to think, "I suck, I'm dumb, I should improve, these aren't great ways to be, time to reflect, accept, and grow." They're going to try and find ways to make it look like they're already wonderful. This is easier than ever, because most humans are pieces of shit, so you look around, and you're surrounded by versions of yourself. The same "qualities" are lifted up. Praised. Or at least not criticized or called out.

A good person is now an enemy of the cultural state. Ditto an intelligent person. Ditto a person with some command of language and grammar. And someone who believes in accountability. Or calls out hypocrisy.

The comments in response to what the woman posted were sarcastic and mocking. "Yes, there are drunks at Fenway. News at eleven." Lots of "What did you expect lol" type of stuff. Lots of "nothing to see here" stuff. Lots "Grow up, it's no big deal" stuff. Excusing away the behavior and making this the woman's fault for being naive.

You also have the issue that people can't read well enough to have comprehended from the above that this woman had someone put their hands on her. They "read" as we were discussing the other day, landing on whatever key words they wish to see, rather than actually, you know, reading, going from word to word, clause to clause, sentence to sentence, accumulating, retaining, and putting the information together as they go.

Because people in this country, this society, this culture, this age, this world, flat out can't read. But yeah, I'm sure loads of them (or so much as a single goddamn person) love settling in with some Percival Everett at night. That's totally, totally believable, right, Pulitzer committee? That's definitely what happens. I mean, you sure wouldn't get an award like that for reasons that have nothing to do with your writing. Nah!

People are so dumb, too. You got comments like, "What's his wife have to do with it." Like...you can't figure out why she felt that way and mentioned it? That's too hard? It is beyond your thinking abilities and you need to ask that question in order to know? Someone else has to tell you because you aren't able to figure that out on your own?

There were accusations that this woman just wanted to stir up some drama. People saying that this happens to everyone or could happen to anyone. Whatever, it's fine, it's just the roll of the dice when you go to Fenway, come on, Red Sox, I have a creepy ass parasocial relationship to nurse with Roman Anthony and look, I refer to him by this first name, that's how close we are!

It's similar to what we were talking about with the criminal mindset. People will defend what ought to be obviously understood, to any rational person with any understanding of right and wrong, as evil as perfectly fine. There are degrees of defensiblity. The moped thing is more defensible, by this measure, than something like David Sedaris saying that disabled people shouldn't work because he doesn't like seeing them when he shops and that they should stay home instead writing and write in a journal about their affliction, and Joshua Boger then flying into a rage at someone who says this isn't right.

That's evil. Joshua Boger: evil. There is no theoretical defense for that. You can't be a non-evil person and believe what Sedaris and Boger believe. But obviously, Sedaris had no problem writing what he did and received no push back or criticism, his agent liked it, his editor liked it, his publisher liked it. Countenanced. Normalized. Because, once more, ours is a society of inversion. Evil and ignorance rule.

Part of the reason he received no pushback is because it's a certain kind of person who is into David Sedaris, and that's 1. Not a good kind of person 2. Not a smart kind of person and 3. An insincere person. A person of no taste, no mental or intellectual refinement. A fraud. A dabbler, a dilettante, a blue blood. A person of no depth who pretends that unfunny things are funny so that they can be seen as "getting it" (along the lines of that person who makes sure that you--and everyone--can hear them laughing at that painfully unfunny one-liner at a movie, as their own personal performance piece). A skimmer. Light reader, light thinker, light liver. Idler. A person who wants to be seen a certain way. Probably a rich person with far more money than brains. A person who uses their New Yorker tote bag as a way of advertising how smart they wish they were.

Understandably, I wondered if this was Lorin Stein taking in a game at the Old Ball Yard. How could I not, right? Sounds pretty Stein-y, no? The unwanted groping and everything. And in the public setting. Maybe Katie Roiphe got him tickets the way she tried to turn him loose on those women at NYU.