Straight up: I abhor racism, in all its forms. But there's a certain point where you get unmitigated wankery of the highest order in the effort of fighting racism, such as Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton, who see racism where it doesn't exist, and can very well be making racist comments themselves. Some refer to this as 'race-baiting' or have other interesting names for it, but no matter how you slice it, in my books, it's still racism. Today's Asshat is a man who has gone the route of Jackson and Sharpton. That man? Dallas County Police Commissioner John Wiley Price. Why? For taking offense to the term 'black hole'. Yes, apparently, 'black hole' is racist.
So here's the shakedown: Another commissioner, Kenneth Mayfield, made a comment that the central collections had become a black hole, saying that paperwork concerning traffic tickets had been getting lost in the office. Anyone with any idea what a black hole is would understand what he's saying. Commissioner Price, on the other hand, takes offence and corrects Mayfield, calling the office a 'white hole'.
It's at this point where I'd love to give Mr. Price a quick lesson in astrophysics, and I figure here is as good a place as any to do it. A black hole forms when a massive star goes supernova and the remaining 'corpse' of the star is so massive and so dense that at a certain distance from the object, escape velocity exceeds the speed of light (the Event Horizon). At that point, no object, including light, can escape the object's gravity (the 'hole' part), and all light is absorbed, making it appear black.
Simple enough nomenclature, right? Apparently not. Admittedly I'm a space geek, so I have some trouble grokking how he doesn't know what a black hole is or think it's racist, but spinning it around and using white hole? Never mind that white holes are still purely theoretical, does he not see the irony in what he's saying? It appears to me that he's doing exactly what he got upset about. He's upset about the term 'black' being used in negative contexts, so he decides to use 'white' in such a context. This implementation of weapons-grade stupid is how Price earns his Asshat of the Day tag.
It doesn't help my temper that the Judge, Thomas Jones, demanded an apology from Mayfield as well, but hey, you get two asshats for the price of one tonight!
(Apologies for the video, in particular, the comments section; I'd have loved to find a video without racist dipshittery in the comments section, but it's Youtube. Comments there are a bottomless pit filled to the brim with weapons-grade stupid.)
