A thumb-sucking article about the whole Rachel Dolezal mess

Rachel Dolezal giving a speech and pretending to be black.

You all know the story. If you're reading this, it means you have a functioning Internet connection, so you could not possibly have missed it. Rachel Dolezal, president of the Spokane, Washington chapter of the NAACP, has been "outed" as white by her baffled biological parents. Apparently, by altering her hair texture and skin color, Ms. Dolezal has been falsely but successfully presenting herself as African-American for years. Now, the truth has come out, and the Internet is up in arms about it. Wherever you go on social media, there is Rachel Dolezal's face, usually accompanied by scolding editorials. Time and again, we see side-by-side photographs which document Ms. Dolezal's shocking metamorphosis from fair-haired, pale-skinned little girl to kinky-coiffed, mocha-complected woman. And then, of course, the questions arise. Why? How? A quick search on Google Trends shows that the previously-obscure term "transracial," which had been seriously waning after peaking in popularity in April 2005, has shot up to unprecedented heights in June 2015. This must be attributable to the Dolezal story. Currently, Ms. Dolezal is being pilloried from one end of the web to the other, from Twitter to BuzzFeed to the Huffington Post.

While I do not endorse Rachel Dolezal's actions, I do think it's worthwhile to pause during this Internet feeding frenzy and ask ourselves a few basic questions. Had you even heard of Rachel Dolezal a week ago? Have her actions directly harmed you or someone you know? Has the Rachel Dolezal story shaken you to your core? Are you truly, in your heart of hearts, outraged by what this woman has done? If you answered any of these questions with "Nah, not really," it might be time to cut Ms. Dolezal some slack. I think this story is less about race and more about our desire to feel better about ourselves by shaming the shit out of someone we don't know. As modern media consumers, we're all like bloodthirsty lions with insatiable appetites. We need a continual supply of fresh meat to keep us satisfied: hippos, antelopes, giraffes, baby elephants, you name it. In that context, Rachel Dolezal isn't a person; she's a buffet. Dig in, everybody! Plenty to go around!

I'm sure you've said and done stupid things, too. My own life is a never-ending blooper reel. The difference is, I'm not famous or important, so the rest of the world didn't really care. But, still, that doesn't change the fact that I did these stupid things. I'll own up to being a moron. Won't you? So before you read -- or perhaps even write -- the latest "Rachel Dolezal is worse than Hitler" article, remember that stupidity is the bond between us all. We are all brothers and sisters under the dunce cap.

I love watching people fail

An attempted hit goes wonderfully, wonderfully wrong in David Lynch's Mulholland Dr.

I don't know who you are, but I'm probably rooting against you. I realize how that sounds, and it's not something in which I take pride. But it's true nevertheless. If you exist and you're not me, I kinda want you to fail and fail hard. Wow. That sounds so ugly. It's not something I can control about myself. That's just how my brain works. Keep in mind, there are limits. I don't wish disease, death, or dismemberment on anyone. I don't want you to get pancreatic cancer or lose an eye in an explosion. I'm a monster, sure, but I'm not that much of a monster. When I say "fail and fail hard," I mean stuff like unemployment, divorce, and bankruptcy. Oh, and public humiliation's always good if it's happening to someone else. I wouldn't want you to get terminally depressed over it, because then we're getting into "disease and death" territory. But your team losing in the quarter-finals or your son flunking out of college? Oh, hell yeah. Sign me up for some of that.

I cannot tell you how much pleasure I got from the utter collapse of Brazil in the World Cup. I'm far from alone in this. We wouldn't have that marvelous world schadenfreude otherwise. Or Fail Blog. Or most of what's on TV right now. That's pretty much what comedy is: laughing at the other guy's misfortune. Once we enter the realm of fiction, all bets are off. Since the characters don't really exist and aren't truly suffering, it doesn't matter what happens to them. The worse the better, as far as I'm concerned. And that includes disease, death, and dismemberment. Take David Lynch's Mulholland Dr. (2001) as an example. In one of the movie's best scenes, a surfer-dude-looking blonde thug named Joe Messing (Mark Pellegrino) pays a visit on his giggly, long-haired, low-life pal Ed (Vincent Castellanos), who sits behind a cluttered desk in the most pitiful, decrepit office building in Los Angeles. Neither of these guys is very bright, and both are worthless sleazeballs to boot, so what happens to them in this scene is especially delightful.

So much delicious failure in such a short amount of time. And I love how whiny Joe gets. "Oh, maaaannnn...."