March 11, 2011
You don’t tug on Superman’s cape
You don’t spit into the wind
You don’t pull the mask off the old Lone Ranger
You don’t walk on train tracks
And you don’t mess around with Jim, da do da do…
-Jim Croce, with additional lyrics by the Bar Association
OK, that isn’t quite the song but it probably should be.
I’ve covered stupid lawsuits before. They’ve been around since the dawn of time.
Take the Judgment of Paris. Paris, (a Trojan citizen, not the city) was chosen by Zeus to pick the most beautiful goddess. Athena, Hera, and Aphrodite each claimed to be the fairest. This was not Athena’s finest moment. Aphrodite was the goddess of love and thus generally accounted the most beautiful goddess. As Zeus’ wife, Hera was the Queen of the Gods of Olympus and also Athena’s step-mother. As the goddess of wisdom you have to wonder what Athena was thinking. It seems like a pretty bone-headed idea to get in that contest. And for what? A golden apple. It was probably just gold-plated anyway.
Paris wasn’t too swift either. The safe pick was probably Hera. However, he let himself be swayed by Aphrodite. That’s not hard to believe when you consider that she bribed him by offering him the love of the world’s most beautiful woman. Don’t judge either of them too harshly as cheating was to the Greek Pantheon as chubby teenage girls are to Justin Bieber. Hera offered to make him king of most of the known world and Athena offered him unbeatable wisdom in warfare. Again, what was Athena thinking? If he was King of the world and had Hera on his side, he wouldn’t need help from Athena. And again, Paris was not very quick on the upswing. As king of the world I bet he could have easily gotten the love of the world’s most beautiful woman. I’m not saying Helen of Troy was a gold digger but you never saw her with a broke… you know what I mean.
And if you consider how this was all orchestrated behind the scenes by Eris the goddess of discord as revenge for a party snub then they all look like stooges.
This led to the Trojan War.
The moral of the story? Like lawsuits, common sense has been lacking since the dawn of time. And a lack of common sense and stupid lawsuits go hand in hand.
For example, the article above suggests a pressing need for signs like this:
Of course, that is hardly original. For example, this warning sign was found just inside the walls of Troy attached to some wooden ship beams that had been made into the shape of a horse:
That Odysseus was one clever fellow. When he wasn’t dressing as a woman and pretending to farm on the beach to dodge the draft he was a pretty shrewd fellow. He knew the one thing those warning signs do: Absolutely nothing. But it did keep him indemnified from all the lawsuits brought by the families of all the Trojans he slaughtered.
But shrewd as he was, Odysseus could never have been licensed as a barber in California:
Want more fun with Jim Croce? Check out this video:
By the way, doesn’t “Jim Croce and the Bar Association” sound like a good name for band?
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