April's Ms. World Class Stupid

Janie Fredell isn't your average Harvard student, but clearly a fish out of water type. She's a "good Catholic girl" who was horrified, simply horrified, to discover her school's "hypersexualized culture . . . instruct[ed] young people to have sex," and ridiculed those who didn't go along.

"An article about [abstinence group True Love Revolution's] ice cream social appeared under the headline 'Not Tonight, Honey, I Have a Brain Freeze.' A columnist who wrote about the group joked of getting 'very, very aroused' just thinking about virgins and wondered if such people might be available for 'dry humping.'

"'It’s an odd thing to see one’s lifestyle essentially attacked in The Crimson,' Fredell said."

Naturally, she had to take action. She became a chastity activist, lecturing students, talking to reporters, appearing on CNN. Because, gosh, her lifestyle may be different, but it still deserves respect and acceptance and tolerance.

To which I say: stuff a sock in it, you whiny little brat.

See, prior to Ms. Fredell's move to Harvard, she lived in Colorado Springs. Making her quite possibly the stupidest person I've encountered in all my years here at World Class Stupid: somebody who had to leave the bigotry capital of America to find bigotry.

Colorado Springs is Ground Zero of evangelical conservatism, the home of Focus on the Family and Ted Haggard's New Life Church. The place has become so identified with discrimination that they had to introduce a public relations campaign extolling their tolerance to attract non-crazy employers to the region. They actually formed a diversity council consisting of twelve hetero whites and one hetero black.

But Ms. Fredell didn't notice. She also didn't read that officers and faculty members at the Air Force Academy "used their positions to promote their Christian beliefs and failed to accommodate the religious needs of non-Christian cadets," that one student was denied permission to form an atheist group, and that the chaplain frequently told cadets to accept Christ or "burn in hell."

She didn't see intolerance when one of their state representatives argued before Congress that gays shouldn't have equal rights, and she didn't read a recent opinion piece in the Colorado Springs Gazette that said discrimination against gays should be legal in both employment and housing. (And she didn't notice how, in that same paper, angry homosexuals automatically become homosexual activists.)

No, Ms. Fredell had no problem in Colorado Springs. It's when she ventured out to the big city that she found bigotry. It's like Ronald McDonald saying the food at Le Cirque isn't good.

And so, Ms. Fredell wins April's Ms. World Class Stupid title. She screams and yells about intolerance for her "lifestyle" when nobody's trying to fire virgins. Nobody's trying to throw them out of their homes. She reads a snarky little headline and a lame joke in an opinion piece, and then it hits her: The world needs to change. The world needs to be more accepting of different lifestyles.

When I first wrote about Colorado Springs, I got an angry email from a prominent member of the community saying if I didn't like it I should move away. Pretty difficult, I thought, since I've never lived there. In the spirit of that sentiment, though, I'd like to say this to Ms. Fredell: if you really want to fight intolerance, why don't you move back?

Janie Fredell, Harvard Student, Steadfastly Fights For Her Right To Be Dumb