COLUMN: Scapegoating away the March slump
We all make mistakes in life. But that’s OK, because we have a couple options when this happens.
First, we can claim responsibility for the mistake. This is obviously the least popular option and also the last resort. There is also the option of denying any mistake was ever made. Though instinctively popular, care needs to be taken with this because, if the mistake is blatantly obvious, it will ruin any chance for all future denials. The third option is what I feel is the best resource available to us – throwing the blame on a scapegoat.
I’m not claiming to be revolutionizing anything with my scapegoat suggestion.
Scapegoats have been around from the time of Adam and Eve up until Jerry Springer. The only problem with scapegoating, however, is actually finding an appropriate scapegoat for each given situation. How many times have you had an embarrassing situation without a scapegoat to set you free? If you are like me, too many times. Here is a personal example of my own.
There was this one time when I was trying to avoid a phone call from some unwanted female acquaintances. Because of my lack of advanced technology at the time (no caller ID), I resorted to a somewhat primitive method of protecting myself from their call. This primitive method took the form of disguising my voice so that it sounded like a woman with a Southern drawl every time I answered the phone that night. Well, after a phone call from a rather confused (and justifiably so) friend of mine, sure enough I answered the phone to a suspicious female caller. Thanks to a convincing performance on my part, culminating in the twangy phrase, “I’ve never heard that name before in my life,” my voice disguise was surprisingly effective. Though persistent, the female caller hung up neutralized and bewildered.
I celebrated unabashedly at my victory once the phone conversation ended, as you might expect. It wasn’t until later that night that I realized I was late for my first day of work at my new job. When I got there, and after groveling and apologizing profusely to my manager, she told me she had tried to call me but had apparently dialed the wrong number, since she had spoken with some strange lady instead of me. Whoops.
Oh, what I wouldn’t have given for a really good scapegoat at that moment.
Now I’m certain that most of you probably have had similar embarrassing experiences and needed a scapegoat. I mean really. Who doesn’t, at some point in their life, disguise their voice as a person of the opposite gender with a Southern drawl in order to evade an unwanted conversation? No need to answer that, but the certainty is that we could all use a good scapegoat every now and then.
For very selfish reasons, I have researched this out carefully, and I am more than willing to share the results of my study. I have been able to discover the ultimate scapegoat to be used in any situation. What is this magnificent, to-good-to-be-true scapegoat? Let’s take a moment and think about meteorologists. They do an excellent job in forecasting weather patterns and what-not, but when some unknown or unforeseen act happens, do they take the blame? Of course not. They have brilliantly come up with an iron-clad scapegoat that I’m sure you’ve heard of before. It’s called el Nio (as Chris Farley once wisely said, “El Nio is Spanish for, ‘the Nio'”).
If there is a natural phenomenon a meteorologist can’t explain, a drought or flooding or even a high pollen count, they simply reason it away with the el Nio argument. The success to this scapegoat comes because of the vague description the experts give it, using nice, technical terms. Go ahead, ask a meteorologist what el Nio is. You’ll hear such terms as “ocean currents, “upwelling thermocline,” and “temperature anomaly plots,” but you’ll probably walk away with less knowledge on it than when you started.
Now don’t misunderstand me. I’m not criticizing the meteorologist method. I am, in fact, glorifying it. And I say, why should meteorologists have the corner market on this extremely useful scapegoat?
Well, now it is our chance. As we approach the inevitable mid-semester slump, where we struggle through assignments, projects and mid-term exams, we will no longer have to mumble inane remarks when our professors demand reasons for our low-quality work. Instead, we can now confidently blame our problems on el Nio. “What happened with your test score?” “Why do you have so many absences?” “Why is your project a photocopy of a Dr. Suess book?” All of these can be responded to with relative ease by simply stating, “El Nio, of course.”
This beautiful scapegoat option does not have to be limited to just school, however; it can apply to many aspects of life. For example, you may wonder how a columnist could be so completely devoid of intelligent thought. You guessed it. El Nio.
Marty Reeder is a senior majoring in history education. Any comments will be responded to in the voice of a woman with a Southern drawl at martr@cc.usu.edu.