Thursday, September 09th, 2010
Why Penn Gillette is an UTTER moron
Posted:Monday, May 4, 2009
I found a rather humorous little post on Cracked.com that called out celebrities for their apparent total lack of common sense in naming their children. The article made a funny little group of four categories under which it organized the offending names. The categories were as follows:
1. Oddly appropriate for Transformers.
2. Oddly appropriate for My Little Ponies.
3. Inanimate Objects
4. Names that are oddly appropriate for cartoon characters that only exist in your head.
Each of the four categories had several (what I thought were fake) names listed below the heading. One that stuck out, however, was listed under category four. This name was Moxie Crimefighter.
You read that right. Moxie. Crimefighter. Now that you understand that there is actually a human being on this planet with this name, I ask you, is it a boy or a girl?
Nope. It's a girl.
That's right, Penn Gillette and his wife named their daughter Moxie Crimefighter Gillette.
Now, some of you may be thinking that this is reason enough for my title. I mean, only an UTTER moron would name their little girl Moxie Crimefighter, right? Wrong.
What someone names their kid does not automatically elevate them to the level of moron in my estimation. No, I may roll my eyes, but to each their own I always say. So why did I single out Penn Gillette for this insult? Because of this (his video response to Cracked.com):
Watch it and then just try and tell me this guy is not a moron. I dare you.
First off, he goes on a rant about how naming your kid Moxie isn't anywhere close to as damaging as naming your kid Dave (for a girl, I would say both would be equally harming), and then he rants on and on about how naming your kid an actual, you know, NAME is going to somehow limit their individuality, while naming your kid after a state of determination is somehow ORIGINAL.
I could see Penn's argument if he had made up some new name for his daughter that no one else had used. Then, yes, I would give him points for making her unique. But using a word, that isn't a name, as a name, isn't original, it is just lazy. And then trying to defend such a choice as being original... well that is just moronic.
He claims that his daughter will enjoy the fact that when she is in a room full of people and someone calls out "Moxie", she will know they are talking to her. More likely they will be trying to tell the crowd what they should feel if they want to succeed and poor little Moxie will just be confused to find that her name is not a name, but a state of mind.
Or, even more likely, she will be sitting in room with a bunch of other people--I'm thinking school room here--and the teacher will call out "Mox.. wait, what? Moxie? Is someone here actually named Moxie?" And running through that teacher's mind and the minds of all poor little Moxie's fellow students will be the following:
Were her parents morons? Or did they just huff too much glue?
And hopefully they will never find out her middle name or she will be lucky to survive school. That's when little Moxie won't think of her parents as moronic, but instead, outright assholes.
You see, Penn, our children are unique, but they are also part of society. And as part of that society they often desire acceptance. Naming your kid something that sounds like you picked out while reading a comic while sitting on the john doesn't make you or your kid unique or wonderful. It just embarrasses you both.
Far better to let your child's personality be the beacon of their individuality rather than your self-interested choice of a name. Hell, you'd have been better off to name her "Placeholder" and then let her choose her own name when she was old enough to name herself. A 3-year-old kid couldn't do any worse than Moxie Crimefighter.
But then again, what could you expect from someone who apparently was named after a fishing reel and a disposable razor? I bet his middle name is Zoil and his dad was a Nascar fan.
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