Stranger than Swiftian Satire

John Stossel has a column up at Jewish World Review about a chain of events that makes anything written by Jonathan Swift seem a bit on the tame side. Here's a teaser.

I always thought victimhood was something to avoid. It meant that something bad was happening to you, something you didn't want. But since today's laws give victims special power and attention, some people seem to aspire to the title of "victim."

What taught me how far things have gone was one small workplace in Ithaca, N.Y., where a group of "victims" said they were being poisoned by the office air. This was odd since the building was in a rural area and the windows could be opened. The air seemed fine to me, but the workers' demands might make you sick.

And, except that this story is so ridiculous that you'll still have to read it all to believe it, is what I might ordinarily call a "spoiler".

Lonny Dolin, Tompkins County's lawyer, said, "We ripped out all of the carpeting in your rooms. We built you a scientific room. And you won't come back to work because now you say a simple Xerox paper makes you sick. That's not accommodations. They just say, fix the whole building. Make it perfect or blow it up, whatever."

The workers' lawsuits [for $800 million] were eventually dismissed, but the legal battle cost the county a fortune.

I say the real victims were the taxpayers.

Ju-eez-uhs-uh, as the Sunday entertainers might put it in the Bible Belt.

-- CAV