Functionally ReTodded

Then you’ve obviously come to the wrong place, especially given what I’m going to talk about today.  If you’re easily offended, I suggest you click on this link and go away.

Today’s story is about a woman in particular and stereotypes in general.  Not all stereotypes, mind you.  I don’t have that kind of time.

A news story came across the wire at the FRT Eyewitness newsdesk that caught my eye.  The headline read:

"Woman passes driver’s exam on 950th try"

As I read on, I found that she was a 68 year old grandmother who failed to get the minimum 60 points of a possible 100 on 949 different occasions.

Oh, and now she has to pass the driving portion of the exam to get her license.

First off, I don’t remember the rule exactly, but when I was taking my driver’s test back in the 80’s, they had guidelines about when you could re-take the test if you failed to pass.  If you took it in the morning and failed, you could take it again immediately.

If you failed that you had to come back the next day, then if you failed again you had to wait two days, then a week, then a month, etc.  Obviously they don’t have that rule in place in South Korea or this woman would have had to start trying to pass the test right after she finished blowing Abraham Lincoln.

I think the only reason this story made it to our side of the 21st century is because it feeds nearly every stereotype we have about bad drivers, and those are that women/old people/foreigners of any kind/specifically Asians are horrible drivers.

I know we can’t judge an entire race/gender/country based on this story, but I don’t think it helps the cause of  the folks fighting to end the blanket stereotyping of old Asian women being shitty drivers.

Further, based on images I’ve seen of the driving in South Korea, do we really think it’s a good idea to give a 68 year old woman the keys to a car and throwing her into traffic?  What are the chances she’s not in an accident within the first fifteen seconds?  100-1?  1,000-1?

And then it got me to thinking about stories that would pander to similar stereotypes.  Combine that with my deep-seated need to be inappropriate, I came up with these headlines.

Native American man arrested for jaywalking after getting drunk and firing a weapon at a casino and wandering the local roads picking up litter and crying about it.

Indian man loses job at mini-mart to off-shoring and goes back to home country to do tech support for Linksys.

Drunk and belligerent Irish man chokes to death on potato and accent.

Black man with large penis and many kids born out of wedlock hides in watermelon field after stealing a basketball.

What kind of headlines can YOU come up with?