Let the Haitians Starve, then They’ll Learn 
Paul Shirley, ex-NBA player, is the biggest douchebag in all the land. As people around the globe mobilize to provide aid to the victims of the devastating earthquake in Haiti, this asshole writes a Jerry Maguire-style letter in which he says that he hasn’t donated “a cent” to the relief effort and that he “probably will not.”
Why? Well because the earthquake was all Haiti’s fault anyway. they should have known better, and giving money to the Red Cross which is providing much needed food and medical supplies to the men, women, and children victimized by this disaster is akin to giving a homeless man a dollar. Everybody knows the homeless man is just going to go out and by a bottle of Alize and that’s obviously what the Red Cross is doing–taking the donations and putting a bottle of Alize in the hands of every Haitian man, woman, and child.
Shirley’s response to the devastation is basically “Fuck ‘em!” He makes outrageous statements about how the blame for the earthquake and the resulting devastation rests squarely on the shoulders of the victims and how we really out to admonish them for letting this shit happen. I wish I were kidding.
It’s one thing to question the readiness of the Haitian government to such a tragedy (and certainly, tsk tsking the government while they are still in the process of burying hundreds of thousands of their dead in mass graves shows an appalling lack of empathy and tact) and quite another to actually blame Haitians themselves for “having too many children when they can’t afford them or by failing to recognize that living in a concrete bunker might not be the best way to protect one’s family, whether an earthquake happens or not” and for not instituting some sort of government coup ‘etat because, after all, “ultimately, the people in a country have control over their government.”
::jaw drop::
He then goes on to insult those of us who have donated to the Haiti relief effort, disdainfully accusing us of jumping on the “Save Haiti Bandwagon” and makes a couple simple “requests” of the victims who are still burying their loved ones:
Could you not resort to the creation of flimsy shanty- and shack-towns? And could some of you maybe use a condom once in a while?
So what’s Shirley’s solution besides sitting around being a unrepentant asshole? Well, he’s not as naive as he once was; I guess his naive inner child would have had the entire country move to another location. But oh no. He’s wiser now:
I don’t think the people of Haiti have the option of moving. But I do think that our assistance should be restricted, like it should be in cases of starvation.
Shocking, right? I could barely make it through the letter. My jaw dropped in the first paragraph and now is somewhere in the basement below me. Every word is vile–from the sardonic reference to his sentiment being akin to “rooting for the Spice Girls” to his suggestion that the US government made the same mistake when it sent federal aid to victims of Hurricane Katrina:
“We did the same after Hurricane Katrina. We were quick to vilify humans who were too slow to respond to the needs of victims, forgetting that the victims had built and maintained a major city below sea level in a known target zone for hurricanes. Our response: Make the same mistake again. Rebuild a doomed city, putting aside logic as we did.”
Setting aside his logic fail by analogizing a global response to the earthquake in Haiti (and the similar humanitarian response to tsunami in Indonesia in 2005) to the federal response in the wake of Katrina (hey fucktard, the government is set up to respond to national disasters…FEMA? Heard of it?), I’m really astonished that people even think this way, much less would sit down and pen a letter expressing such pathological sentiments on a public forum.
He managed to outdoosh both Pat Robertson and Rush Limbaugh, a difficult feat in deed.
What the hell is wrong with people?
Full letter here and posted after the jump:
Continue reading →
