MY LATEST THOUGHTS RELEASED BY MISTAKE

I was reminded this week of how stupid people can sometimes be.

That's not unusual, of course. I'm reminded of that every week -- actually
every hour, now that I think of it -- but this time it struck me like a car
on a highway in the dark of night.

That may sound like just some colorful simile to get my point across to
jaded readers like you, but it's not. It's real. In fact, it was so real to
Scott W. Bennett that he's not around anymore to read this. Because the car
in the darkness knocked him all the way to eternity.

Maybe you saw the headline in Tuesday's Tribune that read, "Blind inmate
killed on Hwy. 1 released by mistake." Kinda hard not to keep reading with
a headline like that. If so, then you already know that Bennett was in the
county hoosegow for a probation violation of some kind. He was supposed to
have been kept there until his hearing, but for some reason that remains
spectacularly unclear the jailer man made a clerical mistake and
accidentally let Bennett out.

That's the sort of wonderfully stupendous error The Almighty System
occasionally commits that makes your heart leap as you keep your mouth shut
and whistle your way out the front door before anyone wises up. I'm sure
Bennett was a mighty happy chappy that night when he wandered out of
jail -- until that old hag, Dame Fate, played her nasty trick on him.

Bennett was run over while walking down the middle of southbound lane. He
couldn't see where he was going. As the headline correctly said, he was blind.

My Ovaltine was getting cold as I read this absurdly horrid story. The
article broke off in midsentence and jumped to the back page thusly: "CHP
spokesman Marlon Varin said Monday that officers may never know -- " and as
I flipped to the back of the paper I found myself finishing the sentence:
How stupid they were to let a blind man walk to town unaided? Whether they
should have let the deaf inmate out while they were at it? What? What?
" -- why Bennett was walking along the line separating the two southbound
lanes."

Hmmm. Yeah, that's a tough one, all right. I'm sure they've been pondering
this conundrum all week. Maybe Bennett decided to pick up litter so that
the road to jail would stay tidy. Or maybe he spied some change and ran to
get it so he'd have money to pay his lawyer. Or maybe he was walking in the
middle of the highway because, well, I know it's a long shot, but maybe it
was BECAUSE HE WAS BLIND!

If the cops are stumped by something like that, I'd sure feel a whole lot
better if they'd hire someone like Inspector Clouseau to do any future
inmate bookkeeping. At least he might be able to tell the difference
between Column A and Column B, and whether someone bumping into the front
door might have a teensy problem on the other side of it.

Seems it was no big secret that Bennett was legally blind. His friends in
San Luis said he was able to get around OK, but that he'd often bonk his
head running into trees and lampposts. And sheriff's deputies said he'd
been in jail before and that they knew about his vision problem, but since
he'd always managed to get home in the past without getting run over they
didn't think it was any big deal this time.

I can see that logic. I mean, I've been able to drive home drunk without
crashing through any restaurant lobbies, so I guess one more time won't
hurt. What the hell. Drink up.

I don't have a problem with people doing stupid things. Look who we elected
president. Look how little they pay me for this column. But I don't get mad
about stuff like that. If I did, I'd be up on some clock tower with my
teddy bear and a high-powered rifle. Instead, I'm just sitting here quietly
reading the Tribune.

But my underwear really gets in a bunch whenever smart people say stupid
things and think we're all dumb enough to swallow it, when all they're
really doing is covering their butts and washing their hands -- or vice versa.

Like Sheriff Pat Hedges, who should stop saying stuff like, "I don't see
[Bennett's death] as something that could have been anticipated or predicted."

WRONG. The county jail is waaaaay out of town on a dark, busy highway.
There's no bus to catch and no sidewalk to walk on. Sheriff's deputies
spring inmates at all hours of the night, and then I guess they go back to
drinking coffee and trying to figure out just how the hell some blind guy
could possibly get run over walking along a dark, busy highway.

Even before Bennett got run over, the Sheriff's Department says it was
trying to find money to pay for rides for prisoners who have to walk that
lonely stretch of road. So I'll cut them some slack there.

But if someone getting killed isn't enough to make the county finally cough
up that ride money, then they can't see any better than Scott Bennett

FYI: I've only been in jail once, and I'm not going to tell you why.