Might I inquire as to what the holy f*ck is wrong with people?

Updated on December 29, 2007 By Ken Begg 27 Comments

I just saw a local new story, about a maybe ten-year old girl who won a toy shop contest, the prize being some Hannah Montana tickets. She accomplished this via an essay in which she talked about how her dad had died in Iraq. This was a lie, and a local court has ordered the monstrous little brat to return the tickets.

Here’s the kicker: HER MOM HELPED HER WRITE AND SUBMIT THE ESSAY!!!! Seriously, WTF is up with that? Can we *please* bring back public horsewhipping? PLEASE?!

UPDATE:  As it turns out, the girl was six.  I thus absolve her of guilt, and lay even more at the feet of her mother.  Here’s what I don’t understand:  What kind of person do you think you are making your child?  How is it possible to be so entirely blind to the ramifications of what sort of adult you are programming your daughter to be when you help her engage in fraud with a monstrous lie for something as essentially frickin’ frivolous as Hannah Montana tickets.  If not horsewhipping, how about bringing back public shaming in stocks?

By the way, the company is only “considering taking away the girl’s tickets,” along with the air tickets to New York for four to attend the show.  I can only imagine the company feels it might actually get some public backlash if it rescinds the prize won via fraud.  If that is even remotely true, it makes me want to vomit.  Don’t just take the tickets back, sue the kid’s mother for fraud!  Seriously, what the fuck.

Sardu, click here to see the CNN story video link, in which you can see the mom.  She is *not* that young.  I will say that the whole idea of the store creeps me out, and I’m a pretty big supporter of the capitalist system.

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  • sardu

    But it’s, like, Hannah Montana tickets.

  • Actually, that was the mom’s “excuse,” that she was willing to do anything to help her little princess win those tickets. Because, you know, of THE LOVE.

  • hk6909

    Even I’ve never heard something that messed up, and I’ve seen all of Bibleman.

  • sardu

    That’s the problem. Mom just wants to be a pal. God forbid her little kitten should yell at her and hate her. (I’d love to know how old the mother even is…)

  • Bobby-G

    Does the story tell what PR firm the mother worked for? (just kidding!) — Anyway, seems like our society has illiminated shame as factor in the decision making process; or maybe the opposite: Do something shamefull and wait for book and movie deals and the tearfull group hug on Oprah.

    Rob

  • Pip

    Ken,

    The lady’s a breeder, not a parent. There’s a huge difference.

    Childfree Pip

  • Wes

    Heck, that’s disgusting. Lying about stuff happening in Iraq to win Hannah Montana tickets.

    I mean, that’s almost as bad as lying about stuff happening in Iraq to win an election!

  • Wes — I agree, the Democrats are pretty disgusting, but that has little to do with this exact case.

  • Wes

    Actually, I was talking about all those weapons of mass … ah, never mind.

  • Ah, you were also acting as if the lies were all, or even predominantly, on one side. Sort of silly, actually.

    And you’re right, both sides, including both the Bush and the Clinton administrations (and the UN, etc.), told the exact same “lies” about weapons of mass destruction as…

    Ah, never mind, indeed.

  • Ericb

    And Mitt Romney is a lifelong hunter and has been pro-life his whole political career.

  • And Nancy Pelosi’s Congress was going to be aggressively anti-earmark. Yes, it’s shocking, politician lie.

  • Danny

    Does anyone remember when we just decided ALL politicians were lying scumbags that shamed America? It was so much simpler, and far more accurate, then the current trend of people saying their team is good. Less flamewars, too.

    As to the topic. I really wish this kind of thing shocked and appalled me, but I’ve honestly come to expect it. I don’t really want to say it’s because we as a culture are falling into shamelessness and greed, though. People like this woman have always existed, and always will.

  • The Rev. D.D.

    I remember catching a story earlier this year about people lying about military service in order to get into VA hospitals for cheap or free health care. I thought that was pretty horrible, but while I did not condone it in any way, I at least understood trying to get something like that.
    This?….this is vile beyond reasoning. A lie that is a slap in the face of everyone who has lost loved ones in Iraq and elsewhere…and for what? Tickets to a concert? And not even a good concert?? I mean, at least try to win some tickets to the Police or something…
    Humanity never ceases to amaze me with its selfishness. I really wish it would.

    Danny–AMEN. On both counts, but especially the first.

  • GalaxyJane

    If not horsewhipping, how about bringing back public shaming in stocks?
    I agree wholeheartedly. And while she is there, why don’t we invite all the families who have lost loved ones in Afganistan and Iraq to see her. I would be happy to provide the bags of rotten tomatoes.
    Why yes, I am in the military and yes, I have lost folks over there. Why do you ask?

  • Ericb

    “And Nancy Pelosi’s Congress was going to be aggressively anti-earmark. Yes, it’s shocking, politician lie.”

    Well, I wasn’t trying to be partisan or anything, I just figured that as a conservative Republican you’d have little love for Mitt Romney who out of all the front runners of both parties with the possible exception of Clinton is the slipperiest.

  • You are correct, sir, although frankly I don’t see much of interest in either party’s slate. I guess I’m for Thompson, almost by default.

  • Tork_110

    Give Nancy some credit. She got the sale of the eeeeevil incandescent light bulb banned.

    Also, when I first saw the header, I thought this was about the kid who thought she got a iPod but got a dumb note about reclaiming her mind.

    http://www.myfoxkc.com/myfox/pages/News/Detail?contentId=5335536&version=1&locale=EN-US&layoutCode=TSTY&pageId=3.3.1

  • As they were reading the essay, did anyone ever say, “Wow! This is written really well for a six-year-old!”

  • Ericb

    “You are correct, sir, although frankly I don’t see much of interest in either party’s slate. I guess I’m for Thompson, almost by default”

    I wonder sometimes if we should go back to the smoke filled room. It seems like the hazing ritual of the primary system scares away all the best candidates.

  • Patrick Coyle

    A friend brought this story to my attention the other night. The article I’d read had a quote from the mom where she says, if I recall correctly, “we did anything we could to win.”

    Besides the wonderful lessons she’s teaching her little girl, I had to wonder… what’s with the “we” crap?

    It’s screwed-up enough when parents try to use their children to vicariously achieve their own ambitions, but concert tickets? That line made me suspect she was more interested in herself going than her daughter.

  • sardu

    Considering we now have a hugely popular TV show where adults attempt to prove themselves smarter than a 5 year old… and generally fail… no.

  • sardu

    Sorry- was replying to this of course:

    “As they were reading the essay, did anyone ever say, “Wow! This is written really well for a six-year-old!””

  • Jimmy

    “As they were reading the essay, did anyone ever say, “Wow! This is written really well for a six-year-old!””

    Probably not as it was likely written by a really dumb adult.

  • Wes

    *the Bush and the Clinton administrations (and the UN, etc.), told the exact same “lies” about weapons of mass destruction*

    Really? They did? The exact same lies? Kofi Anan said that Saddam Hussein tried to buy uranium in Niger? Bill Clinton hinted at Iraq’s nuclear capacity by invoking the image of a mushroom cloud? Wow, I never knew that! I must have been grossly misinformed by the liberal media!

    But seriously, regardless of the “sides” that were telling lies, it’s the Bush administration that is responsible for starting a disastrous war on false grounds that by now has cost the lives of over 80,000 Iraqi civilians and 4,000 US soldiers.

    By the way, it’s interesting that you seem to at least implicitly acknowledge that the Bush admin actually lied, rather than sticking to the “It was an honest mistake” defense that some Bush apologists still cling to.

  • Dan Coyle

    Hannah Montana is a show about a girl who constantly lies to hide her identity in a world where a wig is a perfect disguise so whatta surprise that a kid and her mom thought they could get away with it. The show made them do it! Just kidding.

  • Wes, you have to realize that a lot of us don’t consider this a “disastrous” war. And a lot less people are thinking so now that we’re making obvious progress. Also, Bush never said Niger. A minor point, true, but you’d think after all these years one could at least get the details correct.

    And, no, I DO NOT think using the word “lied” is accurate, unless you use you define that term so broadly that no politician has ever made a statement that wasn’t a lie. Certainly the idea that one party is better on truthfulness is so ridiculous that I can’t even take it seriously. I could just as easily accuse Al Gore of “lying” on Global Warming in that if he really believed it were as dangerous as he says, he would spend more time pushing for nuclear reactors than the Kyoto Treaty. However, although I think this does indicate a level of intellectual dishonesty, using the work “lying” in such cases is unhelpful and gets away from the issues at hand.

    You can blame the Bush administration for the running of the war, but such critiques would have a lot more weight if I could think of one Democrat who at any point in the last six years attempted to offer a better, faster way to achieve victory, rather than just ending it.

    Well, there *was* Joe Lieberman…oh, wait, he was excommunicated from his party. The Small Tent Party.

    Most obviously, none of this has anything to do with anything, certainly not with the subject of this post. If you really wish to toss around the exact same talking points that we’ve been hearing for years, and which have not changed a single mind I know of, surely there must be a more appropriate forum.