Chad Alvarez: Stupid Cockface

In college, I used to tape clippings up on my wall. I had two walls of note, The Wall of Fame and the Wall of Things Humanity Should Be Ashamed Of.

I can remember many of the entries on the Wall of Fame, but only one from the Wall of Things Humanity etc.

That one article detailed an incident in May of 1999 in which Chad Alvarez, fraternity member on the University of Wisconsin campus and son of UW Badger football coach Barry Alvarez, willingly performed an action that catapulted him directly to Stupid Cockface status.

This fucker, as revenge for a petty little email, took his frat brother's parrot and microwaved it to death.

I'll pause now, so you can be horrified for a while.

Alvarez (Chad, not Barry) faced two criminal charges, one for kidnapping the bird and the other for killing it. His potential penalty was twelve years in jail and $20,000. Pretty stiff! He walked away, though, with a relatively light sentence: ten days in jail, nine years of probation, 250 hours of community service, counseling, and a $1,000 donation to the Dane County Humane Society.

Mitigating factors: he seems sorry!
Further damning factors: also pleaded no contest to drunk driving
Verdict: what an asshole

The parrot, Iago, was unable to comment at posting time, as he had been murdered by some Stupid Cockface.

Introducing the Stupid Cockface Patrol

Until the Stupid Cockface Act of 2006 (or whenever) becomes law, fair and decent folk across the land need an opportunity to publicly excoriate the Stupid Cockfaces who mar our experience.

Enter our team of editors, who have Czar-like power to condemn public figures by labeling them Stupid Cockfaces.

There are some rules about who can be nailed with a charge of Stupid Cockfacism (I like this term better than 'cockfaceism'), so let them be listed here:

*Editors should be fair to the condemned. This is a serious label we're considering here.
*Editors should be forthright and honest about how these people and/or actions make them feel.

Okay, then. Here's how we take back the world from those until-now unrepetant philistines.

The Don't Be A Stupid Cockface Act

(reprinted from The Continuing Adventures of MattJohn)

We have a real problem with stupid cockfaces in our society, not least in government:
* "We've found the weapons of mass destruction."
* "That depends on what your definition of 'is' is.

Okay, we all hate it, but they keep doing it. Why? They can get away with it. All they have to endure is a few scathing editorials in the Washington Post and then the public will move on to something else, leaving the offending stupid cockface unscathed.

In other words, in our society there's no real punishment for being a stupid cockface.

I hereby propose a remedy: let's make it a crime to be a stupid cockface. Maybe not a felony, but a punishable, permanent-record crime. Let's have the punishment be a total loss of public respect, a fine that stings pretty hard, and the Stupid Cockface label, a sort of unsheddable scarlet letter of idiocy.

Great, but how do we choose who gets nailed with Stupid Cockface status? Easy, we outsource the job to Walter Cronkite. Or rather, we create a Stupid Cockface Czar, appointed by and answerable only to the American people. This person must be perceived as a wise and neutral person who will not abuse power. The Cockface Czar only needs to designate a Stupid Cockface, then the local magistrate or whoever assesses a fine and applies the Scarlet Letter of Shame.

One Stupid Cockface rooted out and punished, and a whole class of people a little more nervous about crossing that line into doublespeak or preempting the World Cup because it's raining two counties over or changing laws to make sure that child labor is legal in U.S. possessions or whatnot.

What if the Czar goes off the reservation, though, and designates Willie Mays (for example) a stupid cockface? Clearly this isn't right, and the people are going to know it. This is where the national referendum comes in. The only way to overturn a Stupid Cockface designation is by a two-thirds majority in a national vote. If this vote succeeds in overturning the S.C. status, then the Czar loses his or her post and is automatically branded a Stupid Cockface. The people then choose another Czar, and we all resume business as usual.

Won't it be nice to have this in place for the next time Rick Santorum holds a press conference to announce that we've found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq two years after we stopped looking? Or for when Paris Hilton publishes her first book of poetry?

I think we needed this act decades ago. Who can we get to sponsor this in Congress?