Jackass of the Week Award

With Casey Serin hogging so much of the "public jackass" spotlight, it's often difficult to find someone who deserves the award more than him.

But as I was traveling last week, I was knocked in the head by the story of Dean Hancock, whose sense of entitlement gives Casey Serin a hard run for his borrowed money.

Dean's son Josh Hancock was, until recently, a relief pitcher for the St. Louis Cardinals. His five-year professional career ended at the age of 29, when Josh was killed in a drunk driving accident.

The details of Josh Hancock's death reveal that he did, literally, everything wrong. He was driving down a highway doing 68 in a 55 mph zone; blood-alcohol level twice the legal limit for Missouri; talking on a cell phone; not wearing a seatbelt; marijuana and a glass pipe were found in the car.

Unfortunately, he was driving down a stretch of road where a disabled motorist had called for a tow truck. Josh Hancock died when he slammed into the back of the tow truck, and investigators say there were no skid marks to indicate that he ever even hit the brakes to avoid the collision.

It's a sad and certainly untimely death. So why would his grieving father receive an Jackass of the Week Award?

Because Dean Hancock has taken the unthinkable step of initiating a lawsuit against every party involved in the accident caused by his son. He is suing the restaurant where his son ate and drank before the accident, the restaurant's manager; suing the tow-truck company and its driver; and even suing the driver of the Geo Metro that had the audacity to break down on the side of the road!

Restaurant manager Patricia Shannon Van Matre (who is the daughter of former Cardinal and restaurant owner Mike Shannon) has said in numerous publications that Hancock was offered a cab, but he told her that he was walking to the Westin hotel three blocks away.

Whether or not this is true, only these two will ever know for certain. But to place blame for a grown person's actions at the hands of a restaurant manager is beyond the pale. A 29-year old man knows when he's had too much to drink. And those who think that either his bartender or the restaurant manager should have intervened has never been in such a situation--particularly with a pampered sports personality who is surrounded by people who support his every whim.

It is interesting to note that, at the time of his death, Josh Hancock was driving a rented SUV. This is notable because the rental was a replacement for his personal SUV, which was being repaired from an accident that Hancock caused just three days prior, when he was clipped by a tractor-trailer at 5:30 a.m., tearing off his car's front bumper.

In that accident, Hancock was in Sauget, Illinois, just across the river from the city of St. Louis, Missouri. Sauget is adjacent to the crime capital of East St. Louis, Illinois and both towns share a reputation for their strip clubs, gambling and bars that serve until 5 a.m.

In other words, the only reason why a St. Louis, Missouri resident (particularly a white, affluent one) is leaving Sauget at 5:30 in the morning is because he's had a long night of hard drinking.

That particular morning, Josh Hancock almost killed himself when he nudged his SUV out into oncoming traffic to make a left-hand turn. His car was clipped by an oncoming tractor-trailer that was traveling at an estimated speed of 45-50 miles per hour.

While police were called to the scene, no citations were given. Was this because the officer gave the well-known baseball player preferential treatment? Because Sauget's only reliable income stream comes from bar and club-goers and police in that area tend to look the other way in these types of situations? Or because a trained police officer could not spot signs of inebriation in Josh Hancock, in which case, how could anyone expect a restaurant manager to do the same?

What is known is that Hancock was to pitch in a Cardinals game later that afternoon, but appeared to the stadium late and hungover. So if Dean Hancock is so interested in making the rest of the world responsible for his grown son's behavior, why not also sue the City of Sauget, its police force, and the officer who had the opportunity to intervene and take the baseball player's license, but failed to do so?

In that same vein of logic, why shouldn't the Cardinals and/or Major League Baseball sue Dean Hancock and his family for failing to intervene in this time-bomb's life? After all, they lost a pitcher in whom they have invested a lot of time, money, and training, only to lose him as the season starts.

The handwriting was on the wall, Dean. Your son came to the Cardinals after he was dropped by the Cincinnati Reds for violating a weight clause in his contract. Since this is a common side effect of heavy drinking, do you want to sue the Reds for perhaps acknowledging that your son was a drunk, but didn't want to bring public attention to the fact?

No, instead you're suing some guy from Collinsville who just so happened to have his car break down the night your son was so fucked up on booze and pot that he never even hit the brakes for a huge-ass flatbed tow truck. Hundreds of other, most likely sober, drivers managed to avoid the tow truck that night, but your son barreled into it like it wasn't even there.

And if that 26,000 pound truck hadn't been there, your son would have killed an innocent motorist as he sat in his disabled Geo Metro. But you want some sort of handout because, by some chance of science, your sperm met an egg and the product could throw a baseball, and now your family's trickle-down economics have come to a halt and you want folks with jobs and families and lives to pay you.

Dean Hancock's lawsuits represent the most odious sense of entitlement we've seen in the past couple of years. Not only should the defendants in this case refuse to capitulate to any settlement, this man should be ashamed to show his face in public.

Bringing Up Baby The True Tales of Generation layZee

Let’s face it. Americans are breeding their humans stupider, lazier, and more ill-equipped to cope with life. This has been a slow but definite decline since the Greatest Generation, who somehow produced the hedonistic and slothful Baby Boomers, who grew up to do a 180-degree shift into S&L scandals, accounting frauds, and corporate takeovers.

The Baby Boomers managed to be the poorest parents thus far in the history of America. Their “if it feels good, do it” credo resulted in the highest spike in divorce rates the country had ever seen, with divorce rates tripling between 1960 and 1980. To make matters worse, their desire to be friends rather than parents to their children (or ignore them completely) produced a generation of kids that were, at best, slow to adapt to adulthood--Generation X.

The younger Baby Boomers and the older Gen X’ers produced the latest debacle in human history...a generation I will refer to as “Generation layZee.” If Generation layZee has a posterboy, it is Casey Serin, whose incompetence, delusion and sociopathic tendencies should reignite a serious push toward eugenics.

Fuelled by a steady diet of late-night infomercials, shoddy public schooling, and a complete absence of a work ethic, Generation layZee strives to get ahead in life by some sort of social lottery system. This generation was never taught the importance of hard work, of resiliency. They have been simply coddled. And those responsible for this have done them no favors.

Last week’s massacre at Virginia Tech is another example of Generation layZee at its worst. Like Casey Serin, Cho Seung Hui was unable to take personal responsibility for his actions or his life, saying that others “forced” him to do what he did. In the bizarre rants left behind, the shooter angrily whines about rich kids, people being mean to him, and life not being fair.

Well boo fucking hoo. Here’s a reality check...if we look back to those Greatest Generation folks, we see that, after some of them had their names forcibly changed on Ellis Island, their new world greeted them with signs in shop windows that said “No Dogs or Irish.”

Or how about the Tuskegee Airmen? Every last one risked their lives in service to a nation that treated them as second-class citizens. Some were killed, others were held as prisoners of war. Six decades later, the remaining few were formally honored. Talk about delayed gratification.

But not Generation layZee. They want it, and they want it NOW. No one has taught them how to work toward a goal. Just the opposite, in fact--seemingly everyone in their tiny universes seemed focused on preventing even the slightest harm from ever befalling them, from scraped knees to hurt feelings.

Generation layZee is continually focused on what they do NOT have. We’ll rarely, if ever, see them thankful for a simple meal or place to sleep. They seem unable to comprehend the statistical odds that they most likely will not become the next Michael Jordan, Paul Allen or Sergey Brin. Their mommies and daddies told them they were special, dammit, and the world had better reflect that.

As they try to become the “next big thing,” Generation layZee fails in the earliest stages. They have no concept of the amount of tireless work it takes to become that, and even if they did, lack the fortitude to get there. Few, if any, ponder how many parties Michael Jordan missed in order to spend solitary hours shooting free throws. They think it “just happens.”

So they go off into the world woefully unprepared. The Casey Serins of the world want to jump in with both feet and play with the big boys. Because they’re ‘special,’ they blissfully ignore their own lack of training and experience, and seem unable to even put a value on such nebulous ideas.

When things go awry, as they always do in this world, we have the Columbine kids or the Virginia Tech shooter. I’ve been saying for years that this generation, Generation layZee, would be a generation of suicides. I did not predict that their pampering would lead to taking out as many people as they could while they go down in flames.

But whether it’s Casey Serin negatively impacting his neighbors’ finances or Cho Seung Hui depriving others of their very lives, Generation layZee only looks at how they themselves are impacted.

I wish this weren’t the case, but it’s only going to get worse. Everywhere we go, we are allowed glimpses into the future. The latest round of pseudo-parents allow their children to run wild in public, scream at the top of their lungs, and make no attempt to discipline or socialize them.

Each self-absorbed generation has managed to produce a subsequent generation that is shockingly more egocentric and spoiled than the one that came before it. If you’re a parent, you need to seriously rethink your role in creating productive members of society. If you’re thinking about becoming a parent, consider your motives for doing so.

Are you really up to the task of parenting? Or are you content to spend 18 years with a living accessory that will one day create a burden to and a drain upon society?

And to Generation layZee, I say this: Slow down and take a more thoughtful approach to your lives. Before you leap into something, can you answer the question, with absolute certainty, “How will this end?” And maybe, just maybe, after you realize that your parents and schools have failed to train you (as many generations ahead of you have done), you will take it upon yourselves to defy the odds, through actual hard work.

And if you think the world has been cruel to you up to this point, you ain’t seen nothing yet. Time to grow some callouses and thicken up the skin, kids, because life itself is a long and rocky road.

ADDITION: Aantares/Eve Community readers, please see this post.