Opinion: Dumb criminals, celebrities make intriguing headlines

When dumb things make the news, the Rusty Saber is interested.

Dumb criminals fascinate me. The recent arrest in Carthage of a driver stopped by the highway patrol for speeding is a perfect illustration of a dumb criminal. As a former Kansan, I’m embarrassed to admit that the driver was from Kansas. He had a previous conviction on five counts relating to forged and counterfeit documents. He had gone by several aliases with false identifications to support them all.

In his car, he had 68 fake driver’s licenses and other forms of ID. With this track record, speeding was really dumb; however, other things proved to be even dumber. When asked for his driver’s license by the trooper, he produced three of them, and for good measure, threw in two Social Security cards.

Was it enough to raise the trooper’s suspicion? What do you think?

A subsequent search turned up a carload of illegal IDs as well as blank checks. To seal his fate, the dumb crook was carrying equipment to produce false documents.

Dumb criminals intrigue me because of the absurdness of their blunders. If you had this guy’s record and were carrying that much illegal stuff in the car, it should go without saying that you should break zero traffic laws. If you were dumb enough to speed, the very last dumb thing you would do would be to hand the trooper three licenses and two Social Security cards. He might as well have said to the trooper, “See if you find an ID you like.”

Dumb groups are also of interest. Having spent many years in academic circles – where documentation of college degrees were demanded to get a job interview, let alone be hired – the revelation that the Massachusetts Institute of Technology admissions dean had been hired with no college degree scored high on my dumbness meter. She wasn’t the dumb one; it was the MIT group responsible for hiring her and retaining her for 28 years.

She successfully invented a degree to get the MIT job.

Over time, she created two additional degrees to bolster her résumé. Granted, she wasn’t a faculty member; however, my experiences as an academic department chairman who hired faculty and served on administrative search committees taught me that Step 1 requires a candidate to present proof of degrees, universities, times of attendance and transcripts. As well, letters and phone calls would verify candidates’ credentials.

A prestigious university such as MIT would surely check the credentials of the chief administrator of its entire admissions program. She fooled the university brass for 28 years; they deserve a dumb group award.

Dumb celebrities also interest me. I know very little about actor Alec Baldwin, except that several of his brothers are also actors.

According to the latest celebrity scandal news, he and ex-wife Kim Basinger are involved in a malicious child custody fracas.

Baldwin hit the headlines when he left a really dumb, insulting message on the answering machine of his 11-year-old daughter, Ireland. Among the dumb things he said to his child was that she was “a rude, thoughtless little pig.”

In the meantime, he hopes to gain custody of this daughter.

No one knows how the tape reached the press. Baldwin accuses Basinger, and she denies it. But, if she’s the one to make it public, she certainly isn’t the dumb one in this lightweight soap opera.

When Baldwin realized how thoroughly dumb his message had been, he shifted into an apology mode. He even tried to resign from his NBC comedy show, “30 Rock.” Baldwin said he wanted to focus his time on “parental alienation,” whatever that is. NBC refused to let Baldwin’s dumb act force him to leave the show.

Don Imus, the poster boy for celebrity dumbness, should have been so lucky.

Joe McAdoo is former chairman of the communication department at Drury University.