Open Thread: Who’s more embarrassing?

Absolutely!

The economic slavery conditions that third world countries are deliberately forced into is about as shameful as it is possible to get.

People who park in disabled spaces without actually needing them

Be careful with this one. It’s way rarer than most people think, whereas invisible disabilities that require the spaces are more common. Even with my placard, I frequently put my oxygen on when I go to the car on days I don’t need it to keep people from hassling me about stealing a space they don’t think I need.

Back when my knees were still so bad I needed a disability placard, but after I’d stopped using the walker, I got so many glares! At first I tried to feel positive about it, that they were trying to support disabled rights, but after a while I started to get really defensive. I still get glares and the occasional pointed comment about my “young legs” when I take the elevator up a single floor. Just because I can walk on a flat surface doesn’t mean I can handle stairs, thankyouverymuch.

However, I’ve also had people brag about borrowing their grandmother’s placard to get parking at the mall on a busy Saturday, or express surprise when I let my placard expire because I no longer needed it instead of trying to renew it “just in case”. So I cheerfully disparage the self-admitted abusers of the system.

You’re lucky. Apparently, they saw my dad as some sort of shining star before he left, and they badly wanted him back. We moved twice to different states before they lost track of us. They were trying to get him to reconcile with “his wife” (he never got a temple divorce) long after he married my mom.

Oh! I’ll add to this one the gits that throw sodas and whatnot from passing cars at transpeople on the street. Freaks my kids out every time it happens. Thankfully bad aim!

The people who bitch and moan when a wheelchair-user ‘demands’ next use of the disabled toilet regardless of where they were in the line. (Or any disabled person, obviously, but I think it’s particularly scummy when you can SEE the person is disabled and still think they should wait.)

This one bugs me too (if the “reply” function is misaligned again, I am responding to Attackfish and agreeing that the “people who park in spots for the disabled when they don’t need them” is problematic.) I’m aware that it gets abused; my ex-boyfriend drove a car that his grandmother had purchased for him for the purpose of driving her places, and since she had registered it it had handicapped plates… he was abled, she wasn’t, but he parked in disabled-person spots when she wasn’t in his car, if he was in a big rush. But, I agree that it is impossible to tell from looking at a person whether they have an invisible disability or not.

My husband is legally blind. We have been in situations where people gave us a hard time for me insisting on accompanying him as a reader because spouses weren’t supposed to be there and “he doesn’t look blind.” I had a period of a year when I suffered severe shortness of breath (they never did figure out why) and could not climb stairs easily, but lots of places would reserve the elevators for disabled people and then give me the stink-eye when I used them.

So yeah. I prefer to err on the side of making sure people who need something get it than try to keep people who don’t deserve it from having it.

Or the general “growth at all costs” attitude that pervades capitalism, especially as practiced in America…

I’m surprised nobody has mentioned Glenn Beck, who makes a living lying to people and being a shill for big business, and working himself up into racist, sexist, rages.

The lovely folks at the discovery institute who mislead people into believing pseudoscience, which has the indirect result of lowering critical thinking at a time when it is increasingly necessary. As well as Ken Ham, the odious little toad who owns the creation museum and the up-and-coming Noah’s ark exhibit, the latter of which involved lying to Kentucky’s gov’t in order to get state funding.

Global warming deniers are pretty shameful too.

Heh, yeah.

I was twelve when my parents let me get my ears pierced. My sister was eleven. It was YEARS before I let that grudge go, and it still comes up as a joke.

I mean, I get the point, but I think either my sister and I were unusually petty for our age group–quite possible–or ten-year-olds are sadly not quite as enlightened as one might think.

Also, ne’er-do-wells who shit into bags then toss them from passing cars at old folks and immigrants (yeah, my high school friends were douchebags).

And that guy who yelled “FAGGOT~!” as he speeded down the street past my friend which rendered him in shock and asking “how did he know!?” *sigh* OTL

AND this really, really old ephebophile of a museum curator who kept feeling up said friend when he was visiting a recreation of a Viking village during his trip to Iceland.

Agreed.

Of course, the real problem with North American capitalism is that the whole structure is built on the necessity of constant growth. If it stops growing it starts imploding. Which means that any means needed to assure growth is easy to justify as necessary, because it isn’t even about maintaining growth, its about keeping the system as a whole from collapsing.

If one sees parallels to the late Roman empire, one can probably be forgiven.