A fable

Once upon a time, a long, long time ago, in a little village situated in the precise geographic middle of nowhere in particular, there lived a little man who had a peculiar gift. Actually, it was very appropriate that he should have a peculiar gift since he was pretty much peculiar all the way around.
The peculiar little man’s gift was that he could be incredibly acerbic and sometimes downright cruel in the way he expressed himself. Now it may seem a bit unusual to describe such an ability as a gift, but hey, somebody’s got to do it. Otherwise, how would we have anything to compare it to when somebody is very kind and understanding in the way they say things?
It should be understood that the peculiar little man wasn’t mean or cruel by nature. On the contrary, he could be a reasonably nice guy when he put his mind to it, which wasn’t all that often because he was pretty boring when he was nice, so he never went out of his way to deny his gift.
As a result, his conversations with other people tended to be rather brief, since nobody wanted to become the target of his acerbic observations. A typical exchange between the peculiar little man and his wife would go something like this:
Wife: Dear, did you take a bath?
Man: Why, is there one missing?
Wife: Do you know that it is very trying being married to a full time smart alec?
Man: No, but if you hum a few bars, I’ll fake it.
Wife: It wouldn’t be so bad, but those are very old jokes.
Man: Yeah, I know, but I believe in sticking with the tried and true. That’s why I’m still married to you.
Wife: Is that the reason? I always thought it was because I was a glutton for punishment.
As you can tell, gentle readers, long term exposure to this peculiar little man had a detrimental effect on even the nicest people.
The story of this peculiar little man would concern us even less than it does (if such a thing is possible), except for one thing. It was the peculiar little man’s job to keep the people of the village informed about what was going on in the village and surrounding environs (I probably could have found another way to say that, but I’ve always wanted to use the word “environs” in a sentence). The problem was, along with his peculiar gift, the little man also was very intolerant of a condition he called “the galloping dumbs” especially when the condition afflicted people in positions of responsibility.
Since most of his job involved describing the words and actions of people in positions of responsibility, the combination of his gift and his intolerance tended to get him into trouble. He always contended that it wasn’t his fault. He didn’t make the people in positions of responsibility do dumb things, nor did he put dumb people into positions of responsibility. All he did was make mention of the fact when these people opened their mouths long enough to change feet.
His standard response when people would complain to him about his combined gift and intolerance was, “If you don’t want me to call you goofy, then don’t do goofy things.”
This didn’t help much. As a matter of fact, it didn’t help at all.
The upshot of this situation was that the peculiar little man was about as welcome at any gathering as a vinyl siding salesman, and he and his wife had virtually no social life whatsoever.
And what is the moral of this story, children? Good question. The best I can do is:
If you want to be accepted by those around you, don’t be a smart alec and, whatever you do, when people in positions of responsibility say or do dumb things, just ignore it and pretend that it wasn’t really stupid