Self-pity for getting victimized is the new 30

Look, I’m the first to admit it. I’ve wallowed in my own fair share of self-pity. Bad things have

I found this crybaby on a blog called
TheHappyZone.com. Go there and read
"Self Pity: 7 Easy Steps to Quit Feeling
Sorry For Yourself."  Quite a few killers
and billionaire should read it.

.

happened to me, too. For starters (and also for closers, because this piece isn’t really about me) you should have seen my ex-wife’s divorce lawyer.

That said, all the people running around crying “Victim! Boo hoo, I’m a victim!” are beginning  to lie in my stomach like a lump of chicken fat floating atop a pool of vinegar. (Did I just write that awful line? Well, accidents happen. Let’s move on.)

Let me give you a few examples of the stuff that’s stuffing my goat.

“Christlike” George Zimmerman declares himself a “victim.” So reported the New York Daily News the day before I wrote this piece.

“Speaking out for the third time this week, Zimmerman - who has remained the center of controversy since he was acquitted last year of murdering Trayvon Martin - says he plans 'for the worst and hope for the best' in his new life as one of the country's most hated men,” said the Daily News.

Speaking out again? Now wait just a freaking second, George. You strapped a gun around your waist. You left the house, got into your car and began driving around your housing complex, looking for trouble. The closest you could find to trouble was a teen-aged kid named Trayvon Martin, who was coming home with a can of soft drink and a bag of Skittles.

You were immediately suspicious of him because…? You claim it wasn’t because he was black. And not because he was armed, because he definitely was not armed. Perhaps you were suspicious because he had unhealthy snacking habits. You can’t be too careful around those junk food munchers.

You called the cops, who said they didn’t need you to follow him – which you did anyway. Even if I believe your story, that the teen-ager turned on you, a battle ensued, and he was on top of you banging your head on the sidewalk and you shot him in self-defense, you brought this all on yourself.

But there have been followup incidents involving you and your ex-wife, and you and your ex-girlfriend. And both of them involve you pointing weapons at them. When leads me to believe that whenever the going gets the least bit tense, your finger gets an urge to wrap itself around a trigger.

Victim? George, I believe you as far as I could pick you up and throw you – and I to clarify the meaning of that statement, I think I ought to mention that I’m an old geezer with a hernia.

Pitty those totally victimized billionaires

I thank my fellow blogger and mean bully Steve M, who in a recent post on No More Mister Nice Blog called my attention to the suppurating rash of billionaires bleating that they are getting “picked on” for – well, you know, things such as grabbing money from the people who actually do the work to put in their own silk-lined pockets, foreclosing on little old ladies, buying members of Congress like gum balls in a candy store, shipping American jobs abroad so they can be done lots cheaper by abused children, poisoning the nation’s drinking water….need I go on?

I’m not going to get into all the links Steve provided on his February 18th post, headlined, “PARANOID BILLIONAIRES ARE JUST RICH VERSIONS OF GEORGE ZIMMERMAN AND MICHAEL DUNN.”

But one of those links led to a Wall Street Journal piece with a headline that quotes John Mack, former CEO of  former Morgan Stanley CEO as saying, “Stop beating up on Lloyd Blankfein and Jamie Dimon.”

Oh, the poor babies! Blankfein let Goldman Sachs bet against its own clients, Dimon let his bank’s own customers get economically, sliced, diced, deep-fried and then served up hot and crispy on elegant foreclosure notices, and both are wallowing in billions as their reward. Beaten up? That’s like the 15 year-old schoolyard bully who whacks a kindergartener over the head with a stick and then screams, “Whaaa! That boy hit me.”

Let me tell you something, you billion dollar pieces of steaming self-pity. If you were behind bars where I’m convinced you belong, you might have an interesting educational opportunity to learn precisely what “getting beaten up” means. And no, it doesn't mean we ought to up the top taxable income bracket another five percent.

Who says you say that I say 

that he said that she said?

Then we have the he-says-she-says, I-say-you-say situation launched – or rather, relaunched – a few weeks ago when New York Times columnist Nicholas Christoff turned his blog over to Woody Allen’s adopted daughter, Dylan, for a rehash of a long-disputed j’accuse, concerning alleged abuse of Dylan by Woody back in the 1990s. (God save us from newspaper pundits who can't come up with a new idea.)

In case you just arrived at the incoming flying saucer reception area of JFK after a long exploration of the Planet Pluto, fasten your seat belt again and try to keep your eyes from crossing while I summarize:

Dylan claims Allen abused (raped?) her; the law enforcement people at the time said they had found no supporting physical evidence; the judge in the case came to an inconclusive “on the one hand this, on the other hand that” statement concerning the matter; Woody and Woody’s adopted son Moses claim that Dylan, just an impressionable child at the time, had been rehearsed about the story by Mia Farrrow so many times that it became an implanted memory rather than an actual fact; nobody’s sure whether another Farrow child was actually fathered by Frank Sinatra (and where’s the DNA that would settle this matter one way or another?); a legitimate phenomenon called Parent Alienation Syndrome has been cited, and…and…

Well, you could spend a few hours on this if you were in a deeply masochistic mood. Both sides have now shut up, at least for the moment, but the public is lining up to take sides, like clowns in a Shakespearian comedy whacking one another with pig bladders. Go here, and be sure to read the reams of raging reader commentary that follow the article. I fully expect to see people who have no idea what they're talking about setting out to burn either Woody, or Mia, or Dylan, or Soon Yi, or anybody they can find at the stake. Beware of enraged digerati waving pitchforks.

But I was talking about Washington Monthly readers taking sides. One of those readers commented that the real victim in this case is Dylan, whether you believe she was abused, or you believe the whole sexual abuse thing sprang from the brow of Mia Farrow when her daughter (not Allen’s daughter) Soon Yi Previn and Woody umm, eloped, and that Dylan is Mia’s messed up proxy puppet.

Well, at least Dylan is a victim of somebody-or-other. Not so much so for Zimmerman and The Billionaires. (Hey, that sounds like a long-fogotten rock band that competed with Hootie and the Blowfish.)

I’ll leave you with that, because it’s time for me to leave for the spa and have a long, muddy wallow in the hot self-pity pool.