I think that perhaps there IS a choice about homosexuality, and that's whether a gay person chooses to be outwardly so.
A gay person can act "straight", and sure, that's probably how they acted for centuries before society started to accept the "openly" gay.
Whether the trappings of the "openness" are whistling at construction workers, wearing women's clothing, or a swishy walk (or any of the other stereotypes) - again, is not anybody's free ticket to invite abuse.
Some people ARE born different. Whether they choose to TRY to "fit in" and act normal, or whether they go Goth, or Punk, or Zep-hed, or whatever, is nobody else's free ticket to abuse!
Yes - I do agree that "different" folks DO need counselling. But COMPETENT counselling. Not the kind of counselling I've heard stories about here where they ask you if you play Doom, and suspend you if you say yes. They don't need counselling about their behaviors. They probably need counselling to help them come to grips with the assinine way everyone ELSE is behaving. And THAT is probably what happened to your poor Zep-hed burnout friends. Maybe if you and your wrestling buddies hadn't treated them like such assholes, they might be useful and productive members of society right now. Maybe dress different, maybe fix your email server. . .
Or, you could let them self-destruct, let your email server self-destruct, and go watch the game.
What good is "conforming" to the norms of society when you're rejected and spat upon anyway.
You can still join the football team, or wear Abercrombie & Finch-wear, and be 2 feet shorter than the rest, or have zits, or talk funny, or just plain not be interested in top-40's music, etc.
Many weirdos just want to be that way, many others TRIED to follow the lame advice you're posing and "fit in", and still were not accepted. So you see, for some there simply IS no choice. But the most important thing is - there SHOULD be a choice. Just because someone dresses, acts, or plays differently, doesn't give any self-rightous conformist the right to tease and cajole.
Instead of banning Doom and Quake, schools should be forming Doom and Quake clubs, presided over by teachers who actually know something about the online world.."
that's about as likely to happen as a "Campus Satanist Fellowship" group.
. . . you see, there's the TRAP. They sing like they've got marbles in their mouths, in hopes that someone will shell out $15 for the CD with Lyrics sheets.
DavidTC, you may have read my opinion, and I guess I can't agree with you that in my case, liking science, computers, etc. more than sports was THE defining factor that caused my problems. There were other kids in my school who WERE into those things, who WERE popular.
Yeah, my school was somewhat different than a lot of the others. Academic achievement WAS glorified too. Not as much as sports, but the "smart" kids were rewarded. I was smart, I did great on tests, but I was never a good student, and often carefully (you might even say pathologically) maintained a minumum GPA required to be passed thru the system. To this day, I don't know what my problem was, what caused the rejection, that escalated to: Voted Most Likely To Blow Up The World. (heh) I do know that it's still a problem, but the adult world shields me from much of the consequences I suffered as a teen. So I agree that there IS something wrong with "the system", but I disagree that it's the fault of the jocks, and I'll disagree with previous statements of mine that say it's school athletics (except when it becomes a pathological institutional obscession).
Some of the solutions previously posed seem like a good idea, but maybe, it's more complicated than we think. Maybe we all have some things in common, how we were treated, and the pain and rage that we felt ("needs killin' lists"), but maybe there were different causes and certainly, every school is different.
- - - You obviously don't understand the psyche of the social outcast.
It BEGINS with being rejected. Then the kids try to fit in, and for whatever reason, many of them fail (though, from some testimonials I've read here, many do succeed).
I'm not going to begin to analyze why some kids fail: I really wish I knew why I did, because I TRIED to at first.
After that humiliation, they reject that which rejects them. They join a group where they can find acceptance and fit in, and tho there were no goths in my day (it was punkers/skaters/thrashers back then), they do all they can to wear their rejection of "normals" like a badge, and they become proud of their differences even if they have to fabricate them occasionally. This pride turns into a feeling of superiority, and a rightous desire for "revenge", or at least some form of "justice".
So I guess I must state again, that the different kids, may be different by choice, and probably not all of them do the goth thing as a rejection mechanism, but in the context of this discussion, it's a reaction to the original rejection.
Do 5 year olds wear white makeup and black trenchcoats? Hell no. This is the time when they're just starting this process of either fitting in, or not. And they certainly don't begin to formulate this defensive rejection strategy until a few years later. I've actually talked to some of the people I went to HS with recently. And I asked them. What was my problem? you know what they said? They thought I was stuck-up. Well, dammit. I was. But I can remember a time that I wasn't, and was still turned out. Aside from situations where kids are moved to different schools or different states, I think that, in many cases, this process starts very early - and we've heard testimonials from people who moved to another school and became popular, or moved to another school, and went from normal to outcast. So obviously it's much more complex than I'm attempting to portray it - but then again, WAY, WAY more complex than you've portrayed it, Dmarko.
You're missing the point. These people TRIED to "fit in", and were still rejected. What's left to do than to reject who rejected you? It's a classic self-defense mechanism from Psychology 101. That's why a lot of geeks gravitate to Goth style (or whatever). Sure, it actually ends up making matters worse, but it gives them control over a situation that they otherwise had no control over.
Yeah, everybody DOES get teased, but there is a small percentage that gets it MUCH worse than the rest - and perhaps deals with it much more poorly.
Telling them to try to "just fit in" or "ignore the bullies" is not the solution. We were all told that, and obviously, these pathetic suggestions don't begin to address the problem.
"... you're a star-belly sneech you suck like a leech, you want everyone to act like you - kiss ass for your bitch so you can get rich but your boss gets richer off you. .."
-JBiafra from "Holiday in Cambodia" (I'm glad we at least had Dead Kennedys when I was in school - DK tshirts having been banned at my school)
That's the whole point of the posts from former geeks.
Yes, when I was a teen, I felt a rage for how I was treated. I took martial arts (Hapkido), I fought back on a couple of occasions. I had a gun and tried to make bombs. I fantasized, felt superior, and hated hated hated normal people, their way of life, their way of thinking, everything.
Looking back on that, I can say, yeah, I know how all you kids are feeling right now. We can bitch and moan all we want about how the system screws us up - but bottom line is, you gotta not let the hate carjack your mind and run away with you. Unless you feel that Harris and Klebold accomplished something worthwhile. I personally don't - because all they accomplished was this national pogrom against People Who Are Different(TM) (not to be confused with True Soldier-Sniffing, Ray-Tracing, Wave-Function-Collapsing, Kernal-Compiling Linux Geeks (TM)).
The message is: It does get better after High School - and it has to be said, again and again, until people "get it". We can lobby for social change, etc. May be successful, may be not. But in the end there will always be outcasts from the pack, and a social pecking-order, and abuse, and people who hurt extrodinarily from it, and the only piece of real comfort you can give these people (I wish I had had this simple bit of knowlege) is that it just doesn't matter, and it will get better after High School. It's small comfort, but it's a bit better than nothing, and a hell of a lot better than killing yourself and others to get revenge. If nothing else is learned from all of this, let it PLEASE be that.
"witch-hunt" issues aside, we can at least say it's a good thing that all these other bombing plots and things HAVE been uncovered. These were other kids planning to do the same exact thing - so at least some lives were saved.
but this tells us two other things - The rage that Harris and Klebold felt, is not unique, there are other kids being put through at least as bad a situation.
We were lucky in uncovering some of these other plots. How many more spring flowers of death are out there ready to blossom? They can't catch them all. It's going to be a bloody, bloody spring.
SO- I AM seeing some small shift in attitudes in the press about this. In large part, they're still focussed on the video games and the music, and guns. But there is a faction out there that is at least talking about this other issue. Main stream. Some good will come of it, but I think that probably it's going to take a much higher stack of corpses to get America to fully wake up.
Sad, because there are many many kids out there who seem to be willing sacrifice everything to get their revenge, and prove this point.
come to think about it, maybe some district administrator needs to set aside some time in his/her busy paper-shuffling day to be an ombudman for picked-on kids who are afraid to turn to the staff of the local school. Or maybe it shouldn't be someone employed by the schools at all.
Laura, I say this with the big mouth smartass tone that got me in trouble with the jocks a lot:
If Bullies are outlawed, then only outlaws will be Bullies.
But seriously, I don't think that a simple BAN on bullying will fix this problem. The bullying will simply be driven underground, and more subtle means used. (when you were tripped, were you able to get the kid arrested - did you have any PROOF that that kid tripped you? or were you just clumsy?).
See what I mean? But there definately should be some kind of culpability for teachers who look the other way, side with the pops reflexively, or even just ignore the weirdos in favor of the pops. IMHO, we also need to separate sports from education. My son goes to a grade school that has no sports outside of gym class. If he wants to play soccer or baseball, I sign him up for little league. What's so hard about that?
The story a couple days back about the Louisiana school that spent $5 million on a football stadium is exactly the attitude I'm talking about. Jocks per-se aren't bad, it's the fact that they captivate so much attention and glory at the school, that people who aren't jocks become second-class citizens in the eyes of the staff.
And though we've had numerous accounts of this kind of thing here on/., I cannot believe that among ALL the people reading this poor beleagred server, not a single one is a schoolteacher who has NEVER seen this happen. I betchya a nickel, there ain't such a thing. Sure, I know, not ALL schools are like that. In fact, I'd bet less than half are all THAT sports crazy, but I'll also bet that the quality of life for the smart kids in those schools is WAY better, and the science labs and libraries much better funded.
So, you dump sports, and then make the geeks king, so who prevents the geeks from wolfpacking the jocks? Responsible staff, and responsible (informed) parents. That's who.
Re:hmm, where are your gun-laws now, Canada?
on
Catching a breath...
·
· Score: 1
. ..and before the responses get out of hand -
using a poor, dead schoolkid in Canada to promote gun-freedom is no more sick than using 15 poor, dead schoolkids in America to promote gun control.
-'nuff said? Flogger: Hey, horse! Had enough yet? Horse: I'm not dead yet! Flogger: (beats horse)
I truly don't believe that either of these two kids would have ever bought into racism, Naziism, or anti Christianism (is there a "term" for that?).
When I was in HS, my twisted little mind found many ways to retreat from those that caused me pain, including a fascination for guns/bombs/militarism, as well as Paganism. It started with a self-defensive superiority complex, where I convinced myself that I was better than "normal" people, because I was smarter, or a non-conformist, or a free-thinker. Some of that was helpful in establishing an identity in a world that wouldn't let me be normal, and some of that was pretty destructive, but ultimately, I don't know why, I turned back from "the darkness".
I have to also admit, that I teased too. I was prolly about 20% up from the bottom in the social pecking-order at my school, and I'm not proud of it. So I'm having a hard time coming to grips with pain AND guilt. I can't blame the teasees (shooters) because I was teased, and I can't blame the teasers (because I teased), and I sure as hell can't blame music, video games, or guns, because I have at least half a brain. I guess I can turn to "the system" like everyone else, and relate that I too witnessed the institutionalization of the "caste-system" - where teachers favored the popular kids, and ignored the unpopular ones, and in judging conflict, the administrators most often sided with the populars. (in fact, I was almost arrested because some jock stole a kid's walkman, and said he saw ME do it. The thing that saved me was that they searched my person, and my locker and couldn't find the walkman).
Can I empathize with the rational that caused these kids to go berzerk? Yes. I "snapped" at some point, and others describe it here too. Hand-to-hand seems so much more "acceptable" than guns and bombs. It shouldn't have to be, and frankly, I don't know what would have become of me had I not become proficient in HapKiDo, or had I been physically just plain unable to win or at least draw my fights. Not all oppressed kids have enough of a physical stature - possibly the reason why they are being teased. (
Mostly I'm just glad to know that I'm not alone, and that it's damn great to not be in school anymore.
fuk LSD, I'm from "central coast" California, all our TV is imported from LA, and you know what? I never watch the local news because it's nothing but a list of the dozen or so people who died violent deaths that day. High speed chases, hostage situations, gang warfare.
Then we had this local guy get arrested for parole violation this week, and found out that he'd been responsible for the disappearance of two local college girls. (they found the bodies). No escape, even in remote, rural California.
I never felt sorry for Cordelia. She was a class-A bitch when she was a popular, and she was a class-A bitch when she hung out with the slayers, and now that she's back in the "in-crowd" she's still a class-A bitch.
Slashdot Mirror
You wanna know the difference between schools on one side of that district from the other?
Check the property values of the houses.
I bet a 3-bedroom near the nicer school costs 20% more than a 3-bedroom near the shabby one.
I think that perhaps there IS a choice about homosexuality, and that's whether a gay person chooses to be outwardly so.
A gay person can act "straight", and sure, that's probably how they acted for centuries before society started to accept the "openly" gay.
Whether the trappings of the "openness" are whistling at construction workers, wearing women's clothing, or a swishy walk (or any of the other stereotypes) - again, is not anybody's free ticket to invite abuse.
Bullshit.
Some people ARE born different. Whether they choose to TRY to "fit in" and act normal, or whether they go Goth, or Punk, or Zep-hed, or whatever, is nobody else's free ticket to abuse!
Yes - I do agree that "different" folks DO need counselling. But COMPETENT counselling. Not the kind of counselling I've heard stories about here where they ask you if you play Doom, and suspend you if you say yes. They don't need counselling about their behaviors. They probably need counselling to help them come to grips with the assinine way everyone ELSE is behaving. And THAT is probably what happened to your poor Zep-hed burnout friends. Maybe if you and your wrestling buddies hadn't treated them like such assholes, they might be useful and productive members of society right now. Maybe dress different, maybe fix your email server. . .
Or, you could let them self-destruct, let your email server self-destruct, and go watch the game.
Your choice.
Your mental clutch is slipping.
What good is "conforming" to the norms of society when you're rejected and spat upon anyway.
You can still join the football team, or wear Abercrombie & Finch-wear, and be 2 feet shorter than the rest, or have zits, or talk funny, or just plain not be interested in top-40's music, etc.
Many weirdos just want to be that way, many others TRIED to follow the lame advice you're posing and "fit in", and still were not accepted. So you see, for some there simply IS no choice. But the most important thing is - there SHOULD be a choice. Just because someone dresses, acts, or plays differently, doesn't give any self-rightous conformist the right to tease and cajole.
I couldn't get contacts. Rampant eye infections.
/. thread)
The problem isn't glasses tho, it's spending less than $200 on your FRAMES.
(that's another rant for, I'm sure, another poignant
Obey the Cow God
(from an album called "Cereal Killer" by a band called "Green Jelly")
Instead of banning Doom and Quake, schools should be forming Doom and Quake clubs, presided over
by teachers who actually know something about the online world.."
that's about as likely to happen as a "Campus Satanist Fellowship" group.
. . . you see, there's the TRAP. They sing like they've got marbles in their mouths, in hopes that someone will shell out $15 for the CD with Lyrics sheets.
Daniel,
over the past few days, I'm really coming to understand those dark years. And you're right.
Thanks
DavidTC, you may have read my opinion, and I guess I can't agree with you that in my case, liking science, computers, etc. more than sports was THE defining factor that caused my problems.
There were other kids in my school who WERE into those things, who WERE popular.
Yeah, my school was somewhat different than a lot of the others. Academic achievement WAS glorified too. Not as much as sports, but the "smart" kids were rewarded. I was smart, I did great on tests, but I was never a good student, and often carefully (you might even say pathologically) maintained a minumum GPA required to be passed thru the system. To this day, I don't know what my problem was, what caused the rejection, that escalated to: Voted Most Likely To Blow Up The World. (heh)
I do know that it's still a problem, but the adult world shields me from much of the consequences I suffered as a teen.
So I agree that there IS something wrong with "the system", but I disagree that it's the fault of the jocks, and I'll disagree with previous statements of mine that say it's school athletics (except when it becomes a pathological institutional obscession).
Some of the solutions previously posed seem like a good idea, but maybe, it's more complicated than we think. Maybe we all have some things in common, how we were treated, and the pain and rage that we felt ("needs killin' lists"), but maybe there were different causes and certainly, every school is different.
-
-
-
You obviously don't understand the psyche of the social outcast.
It BEGINS with being rejected.
Then the kids try to fit in, and for whatever reason, many of them fail (though, from some testimonials I've read here, many do succeed).
I'm not going to begin to analyze why some kids fail: I really wish I knew why I did, because I TRIED to at first.
After that humiliation, they reject that which rejects them. They join a group where they can find acceptance and fit in, and tho there were no goths in my day (it was punkers/skaters/thrashers back then), they do all they can to wear their rejection of "normals" like a badge, and they become proud of their differences even if they have to fabricate them occasionally. This pride turns into a feeling of superiority, and a rightous desire for "revenge", or at least some form of "justice".
So I guess I must state again, that the different kids, may be different by choice, and probably not all of them do the goth thing as a rejection mechanism, but in the context of this discussion, it's a reaction to the original rejection.
Do 5 year olds wear white makeup and black trenchcoats? Hell no. This is the time when they're just starting this process of either fitting in, or not. And they certainly don't begin to formulate this defensive rejection strategy until a few years later.
I've actually talked to some of the people I went to HS with recently. And I asked them. What was my problem? you know what they said? They thought I was stuck-up. Well, dammit. I was. But I can remember a time that I wasn't, and was still turned out. Aside from situations where kids are moved to different schools or different states, I think that, in many cases, this process starts very early - and we've heard testimonials from people who moved to another school and became popular, or moved to another school, and went from normal to outcast. So obviously it's much more complex than I'm attempting to portray it - but then again, WAY, WAY more complex than you've portrayed it, Dmarko.
shit man. Chicago's cold in the winter - but Greenland? fuck that. torture me man.
I think that the reason that this song didn't have any effect is because nobody can understand the fucking lyrics.
my $.02
Red cars. they've been doing that for years.
You're missing the point. These people TRIED to "fit in", and were still rejected. What's left to do than to reject who rejected you? It's a classic self-defense mechanism from Psychology 101. That's why a lot of geeks gravitate to Goth style (or whatever). Sure, it actually ends up making matters worse, but it gives them control over a situation that they otherwise had no control over.
Yeah, everybody DOES get teased, but there is a small percentage that gets it MUCH worse than the rest - and perhaps deals with it much more poorly.
Telling them to try to "just fit in" or "ignore the bullies" is not the solution. We were all told that, and obviously, these pathetic suggestions don't begin to address the problem.
"... you're a star-belly sneech you suck like a leech, you want everyone to act like you - kiss ass for your bitch so you can get rich but your boss gets richer off you. . ."
-JBiafra from "Holiday in Cambodia"
(I'm glad we at least had Dead Kennedys when I was in school - DK tshirts having been banned at my school)
NO NO NO NO NO!
That's the whole point of the posts from former geeks.
Yes, when I was a teen, I felt a rage for how I was treated. I took martial arts (Hapkido), I fought back on a couple of occasions. I had a gun and tried to make bombs. I fantasized, felt superior, and hated hated hated normal people, their way of life, their way of thinking, everything.
Looking back on that, I can say, yeah, I know how all you kids are feeling right now. We can bitch and moan all we want about how the system screws us up - but bottom line is, you gotta not let the hate carjack your mind and run away with you. Unless you feel that Harris and Klebold accomplished something worthwhile. I personally don't - because all they accomplished was this national pogrom against People Who Are Different(TM) (not to be confused with True Soldier-Sniffing, Ray-Tracing, Wave-Function-Collapsing, Kernal-Compiling Linux Geeks (TM)).
The message is: It does get better after High School - and it has to be said, again and again, until people "get it".
We can lobby for social change, etc. May be successful, may be not. But in the end there will always be outcasts from the pack, and a social pecking-order, and abuse, and people who hurt extrodinarily from it, and the only piece of real comfort you can give these people (I wish I had had this simple bit of knowlege) is that it just doesn't matter, and it will get better after High School. It's small comfort, but it's a bit better than nothing, and a hell of a lot better than killing yourself and others to get revenge. If nothing else is learned from all of this, let it PLEASE be that.
beer party: double-secret probation
"witch-hunt" issues aside, we can at least say it's a good thing that all these other bombing plots and things HAVE been uncovered. These were other kids planning to do the same exact thing - so at least some lives were saved.
but this tells us two other things -
The rage that Harris and Klebold felt, is not unique, there are other kids being put through at least as bad a situation.
We were lucky in uncovering some of these other plots. How many more spring flowers of death are out there ready to blossom? They can't catch them all. It's going to be a bloody, bloody spring.
SO-
I AM seeing some small shift in attitudes in the press about this. In large part, they're still focussed on the video games and the music, and guns. But there is a faction out there that is at least talking about this other issue. Main stream. Some good will come of it, but I think that probably it's going to take a much higher stack of corpses to get America to fully wake up.
Sad, because there are many many kids out there who seem to be willing sacrifice everything to get their revenge, and prove this point.
come to think about it, maybe some district administrator needs to set aside some time in his/her busy paper-shuffling day to be an ombudman for picked-on kids who are afraid to turn to the staff of the local school. Or maybe it shouldn't be someone employed by the schools at all.
Laura,
/., I cannot believe that among ALL the people reading this poor beleagred server, not a single one is a schoolteacher who has NEVER seen this happen. I betchya a nickel, there ain't such a thing.
I say this with the big mouth smartass tone that got me in trouble with the jocks a lot:
If Bullies are outlawed, then only outlaws will be Bullies.
But seriously, I don't think that a simple BAN on bullying will fix this problem. The bullying will simply be driven underground, and more subtle means used. (when you were tripped, were you able to get the kid arrested - did you have any PROOF that that kid tripped you? or were you just clumsy?).
See what I mean? But there definately should be some kind of culpability for teachers who look the other way, side with the pops reflexively, or even just ignore the weirdos in favor of the pops. IMHO, we also need to separate sports from education. My son goes to a grade school that has no sports outside of gym class. If he wants to play soccer or baseball, I sign him up for little league. What's so hard about that?
The story a couple days back about the Louisiana school that spent $5 million on a football stadium is exactly the attitude I'm talking about. Jocks per-se aren't bad, it's the fact that they captivate so much attention and glory at the school, that people who aren't jocks become second-class citizens in the eyes of the staff.
And though we've had numerous accounts of this kind of thing here on
Sure, I know, not ALL schools are like that. In fact, I'd bet less than half are all THAT sports crazy, but I'll also bet that the quality of life for the smart kids in those schools is WAY better, and the science labs and libraries much better funded.
So, you dump sports, and then make the geeks king, so who prevents the geeks from wolfpacking the jocks? Responsible staff, and responsible (informed) parents. That's who.
. . .and before the responses get out of hand -
using a poor, dead schoolkid in Canada to promote gun-freedom is no more sick than using 15 poor, dead schoolkids in America to promote gun control.
-'nuff said?
Flogger: Hey, horse! Had enough yet?
Horse: I'm not dead yet!
Flogger: (beats horse)
I truly don't believe that either of these two kids would have ever bought into racism, Naziism, or anti Christianism (is there a "term" for that?).
When I was in HS, my twisted little mind found many ways to retreat from those that caused me pain, including a fascination for guns/bombs/militarism, as well as Paganism. It started with a self-defensive superiority complex, where I convinced myself that I was better than "normal" people, because I was smarter, or a non-conformist, or a free-thinker. Some of that was helpful in establishing an identity in a world that wouldn't let me be normal, and some of that was pretty destructive, but ultimately, I don't know why, I turned back from "the darkness".
I have to also admit, that I teased too. I was prolly about 20% up from the bottom in the social pecking-order at my school, and I'm not proud of it. So I'm having a hard time coming to grips with pain AND guilt. I can't blame the teasees (shooters) because I was teased, and I can't blame the teasers (because I teased), and I sure as hell can't blame music, video games, or guns, because I have at least half a brain. I guess I can turn to "the system" like everyone else, and relate that I too witnessed the institutionalization of the "caste-system" - where teachers favored the popular kids, and ignored the unpopular ones, and in judging conflict, the administrators most often sided with the populars. (in fact, I was almost arrested because some jock stole a kid's walkman, and said he saw ME do it. The thing that saved me was that they searched my person, and my locker and couldn't find the walkman).
Can I empathize with the rational that caused these kids to go berzerk? Yes. I "snapped" at some point, and others describe it here too. Hand-to-hand seems so much more "acceptable" than guns and bombs. It shouldn't have to be, and frankly, I don't know what would have become of me had I not become proficient in HapKiDo, or had I been physically just plain unable to win or at least draw my fights. Not all oppressed kids have enough of a physical stature - possibly the reason why they are being teased. (
Mostly I'm just glad to know that I'm not alone, and that it's damn great to not be in school anymore.
Life is a Bitch.
School is it's son.
fuk LSD, I'm from "central coast" California, all our TV is imported from LA, and you know what? I never watch the local news because it's nothing but a list of the dozen or so people who died violent deaths that day. High speed chases, hostage situations, gang warfare.
Then we had this local guy get arrested for parole violation this week, and found out that he'd been responsible for the disappearance of two local college girls. (they found the bodies). No escape, even in remote, rural California.
I never felt sorry for Cordelia. She was a class-A bitch when she was a popular, and she was a class-A bitch when she hung out with the slayers, and now that she's back in the "in-crowd" she's still a class-A bitch.