Stupid people in the local news

The newspaper is always a goldmine if you like tales of the stupid. Here is a smattering from today alone:

A woman managed to get a DUI while riding a horse. She steered the poor beast into the traffic lanes of a highway and caused a car to hit them. The people in the car were treated and released. She is in intensive care. The horse reportedly survived, but there was no word on his condition.

And just when you thought she couldn't any more tawdry, Jennifer Wilbanks, the infamous "runaway bride" is suing her now ex-fiance for $500,000. She claims he made off with the money he made by selling her story while she was "hospitalized and under medication". He bought a McMansion with it. She apparently lived there with him until they broke up and he kicked her out. In addition to the money, she is demanding that he return a whole crapload of specific items - a list populated with things like "gold sofa in parlor", "ladder belonging to my dad", and "all the wedding and shower gifts given to her by family and friends". By the looks of it, if she gets all that stuff, he'll be living in an empty house. Point of order: shouldn't both of them have returned all those gifts to the people who bought them, as the well-meaning purchasers were under the mistaken impression that they would be getting married?

Even the sports page did not escape the stupidity. Our governor, Sonny Purdue, was unhappy with this headline in Sunday’s sports section: “Dogs get put in their place” (referring to the 51-33 drubbing that UT gave UGA on Saturday night). He was so unhappy, in fact, that he couldn’t wait until after church to act. He dictated a letter to the AJC by telephone on his way to church, accusing them of frothing at the bit to write bad things about the “good people of this state”. I guess he's pandering for the Bulldawg vote (he's up for re-election). For the record, I was very pleased with the AJC’s choice of headline and briefly considered framing it.