When you look at the Bad Dawgs section of The Reflector -and don’t tell me you don’t, because I know better-don’t you wish you could know the full story behind those spare accounts?
I’m not talking about the predictable “drunk in public” ones. I’m talking about the ones that say things like “girl reports slippers stolen by roommate.”
That affords a wealth of speculation, ranging from their roommate relationship to the type of slippers that inspired such a theft. It’s those kind of things that stand out from the never-ending list of DUI’s and false fire alarms.
There’s one good thing about national news. It appeases our curiosity when reporting the bizarre.
You don’t have to watch “The Jay Leno Show” to get the crazy headlines and random news all over the country. Just go over to the CNN Web site, skip over the main news, and look for the small articles off to the side.
You will learn more about this country, or even this world, just by those tiny blurbs of information from The Associated Press, especially if someone is getting sued.
I’m sure the McDonald’s coffee case started out on the very edge of the paper.
One story in particular caught my interest. In April of last year, a couple from New Jersey rented “Home Alone 3” for their 4-year-old girl. After the credits, they were surprised to see 10 minutes of hard-core porn.
As such, they have decided to sue Blockbuster Video.
The lawsuit explains that Blockbuster “had a responsibility and a duty to inspect, monitor and ensure the quality and propriety of all video products
purchased by its customers.”
I have never worked in a video rental store. But I could imagine how difficult it would be to check every single tape before they put it back on the shelves. That would be one of the most horrible jobs in the world.
Imagine how many times the tape-checker would have to watch “Gigli” and “Legally Blonde.”
I understand how the parents feel, too. They wanted their child to watch a movie with the theme that small children can defeat criminals easily through the ingenuity of torture. They were assailed by questionable material instead. If that ever happened to my future child, I would be upset.
But isn’t it self-defeating to go through the whole legal process?
Lawyers and psychologists are probably going to have to study the effects of the encounter of pornography on the 4-year-old, who meanwhile will get older and understand more throughout the lengthy process of the lawsuit.
The family will get publicity and everyone from their neighbors in Jersey to a columnist for a college newspaper in Mississippi will have an opinion about it.
Already the family peace and stability essential to raising small children has been ruined. What began as a minor annoyance, an anecdote about which to complain in Sunday school, has become a huge deal that has lasted since April of last year and will mainly just end up clogging up the legal process.
And all this trouble is for something that the child probably would not have even remembered at most a few weeks after the event.
Also, why sue the store or the company? Doesn’t Blockbuster have concise records of who rents each tape? I should think so, because every time I walk into Blockbuster, or even Movie Gallery, they have accurate records of how much I owe them in late fees.
A logical solution to the whole dispute between Blockbuster and the Jersey parents is for Blockbuster to find the people who destroyed the tape, make them pay for the damages, and then give the parents the money as apology for their inconvenience.
But that is not going to happen. There is a perfectly good reason to sue Blockbuster. Blockbuster has money.
The most recent and effective get-rich-quick scheme has presented an opportunity, and those parents are not going to waste it.
Is any lawsuit going to erase any images that may have inadvertently gotten imprinted in their daughter’s mind? Of course not.
The “new version” of “Home Alone 3” is their McDonald’s coffee. While they
would have gotten money in the settlement that I proposed, they wouldn’t get near as much, and they wouldn’t get their name in the papers.
I’m not saying these people haven’t been wronged. They have. But I find it rather sad that they and most other people in America would automatically resort to hashing out their problems in the legal system instead of talking it out themselves.
In civil disputes, we need to get used to the idea of the judicial system as a last resort instead of a source of income.
So, the next time a toothpick falls from a ceiling and you think that there was a chance it could have skewered your toe and that you deserve compensation, just remember the words of Judge Judy: “That’s bologna!”
Angela Adair is a junior English major. She can be reached at [email protected].