Nothing Like A Tragedy To Bring Stupid People Out Of The Woodworks

I haven't really touched on the first part of the triad (work, chat rooms and writing) in almost a month, mostly because I hadn't found anything worthwhile to write about.

Until now.

As you all know, I work in state government, or to be more precise, the Department of Children and Families, or DCF for short. I like what I do and I like where I work. Doesn't mean that I'm an apologist for them, because like most intelligent taxpayers that reside in my state, I'm more than willing to call them to the carpet when necessary.

Yesterday (July 17th) a DCF worker was charged with manslaughter in connection with the death of a baby in their care. Within five hours of the blurb popping up in my local chat forum, the Jethro/Jethrine Bodines of the state came pouring out of the woodwork to put their two cents in.

Mind you, what this person did was horrendous, but it doesn't excuse the fact that Jethro and Jethrine came out with guns a-blazin', painting all 4,000 employees with a guilt-by-association brush.

The fact that this agency is responding to this tragedy quickly and decisively is totally lost on these people. They immediately started slamming DCF for letting this person be a foster parent (read: conflict of interest); slamming them for removing the child in the first place (read: losing them in the system); slamming them for corruption, legal or otherwise (read: WMD argument that Democrats have been lobbying for 7 years, in other words, tired and stale); and slamming state workers in general (read: see previous read).

It bothers me to no end that these keyboard commandos have nothing better to do than to criticize without taking action, or even worse, trying to paint themselves as the innocent victim of the big bad DCF/State court system.

It also bothers me to no end, the continuous posturing by our State Attorney General and our Child Advocate, who do nothing but produce sound bite after sound bite, shedding crocodile tears and boo hoo hooing the latest effort by DCF to get things under control so that they can get out from underneath the Federal thumb (court decree due to a class action lawsuit, year #16).

So, being the unbiased person that I am, I've made it my mission to present at the very minimum, a balanced viewpoint in my local forum. It hasn't been easy, because most of these people will not listen to any kind of viewpoint that deviates from the current norm, so in essence, I've had to fight fire with fire. This thread is typical of the hyperbole that spews forth from my fellow Jethros and Jethrines.

I'm not a total defender of state workers in general or my agency in particular, but there has to be a happy medium when it comes to expressing your viewpoint. I'm all for being allowed to express your viewpoint unencumbered (main reason why I created this blog, to get away from people who would have me banned), but people, use a little common sense when your spouting your viewpoint.

Because if you don't, you'll have to face people like me who don't care if your tiny little feelings get hurt because I forced you to put up or shut up.