It May Not Be A Crime, But You Don't Have To Be A Bully

Via a post by Mark Esposito, one of the weekend guest-bloggers at Jonathan Turley's place, comes another teenage bullying story:

Whitney Kropp, a self-described outcast with just a handful of close friends at Ogemaw Heights High School, was picked to be the female representative of the sophomore class royalty. It certainly came as a shock.

But hours later, the 16-year-old learned classmates voted for her as a joke. She spent the night in tears.

I'm like, 'Wow, I feel like trash,'" Kropp said. "I feel like I'm a little thing that no one really cares about."

That night, she said, she contemplated ending her life "right here, right now."

Hysterical, right? Let's vote for the unpopular girl so we can have a great laugh at her expense.  While my position has long been clear that this shouldn't give rise to a new law creating a crime of behaving like a total jerk, mean, selfish and thoughtless, the flip-side is that there is nothing about being mean to others that makes you anything other than an absolute idiot.  It's not funny. It's cruel.  Your father ought to take you the woodshed, each and every one of you, for this behavior so you learn that it's not acceptable to go through life acting like such a douche.

But this time, things turned around on the little snot-nosed jerks who thought they could grad a cheap laugh at Whitney Kropp's expense.

But thanks to a push from her family and friends, she decided to embrace what happened and turn the tables.

"I can just prove all these kids wrong ... I'm not the joke everyone thinks I am."

When word of the prank spread, local businesses stepped up to the plate.

Opting to stay on the homecoming court was a tough decision, Kropp said. That bold move prompted local businesses to donate her homecoming gown and shoes, while a salon gave her hair a new 'do.' A Facebook support page created for her has more than 96,000 "likes."

Just as the answer to hate speech is more speech, the answer to non-violent bullying is strength by not letting the jerks own you.  As the video shows, Whitney Kropp seems like a lovely young lady.  Why others in school pick one person or another to be their goat, the school outcast, rather than a popular kid is never quite clear, but I bet that in a few years, all the boys who treated her poorly will wish they could get a date with her.  Only then, when she blows them off, will they possibly have a clue how badly they screwed up.



It's not nearly as melodramatic as handwringing or crying over another teen tragedy, but this story demonstrates a few critical points that need airing.  Kids can be jerks, cruel and uncaring about others just as they try to hide their own feelings of inadequacy behind bravado at the expense of others.  It's hardly their finest quality, but it has always been the case and the psyche of teenagers isn't changing any time soon.

Rather than promote and elevate the victimhood of the butt of stupid and hurtful pranks, kids need to toughen up and fight back.  Most children end up being the victim of "bullying," if its defined as conduct which hurts the feelings of another, and unless we plan to put every teenager in jail until they grow out of their insecurities and into some sort of a more empathetic state, there will be no legal solution to this.  Get over it.

As Whitney Kropp, as well as her many supporters, shows, a far more effective solution is to beat them at their own game.  They pranked you? You beat them. Self-esteem is a fragile thing, but self-respect can't be taken away by anyone.

Most importantly, just because it may not be a crime to pull a prank at someone else's expense doesn't mean it's okay to do so. You're a jerk. Only an insecure little shit goes out of his way to hurt another person's feelings to assuage his own feelings of inadequacy. Your prank doesn't impugn the victim, but you, and your own sense of worthlessness.

No one makes you behave like a bully. Don't do it. And if you do, I hope somebody like Whitney Kropp gives you a good spanking to let you know who got beat. Guess what? The reason you have all those secret feelings of inadequacy is that you are.  Who's laughing now?

 

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