Is There Something in the Drinking Water, or, Were People Always This Crazy and We Just Didn’t Notice?

Is there something funny in our drinking water? Or have people always been this crazy and we just didn’t notice?

The reasons I’m asking are …

Te’o and the girlfriend who wasn’t. If he’d been a lonely nerd with acne and a weight problem no one would have been all that surprised by a fantasy girlfriend. But everyone knows that football stars are like young lords on college campuses. The profs, the staff, the press, the administration and the girls just can’t say “no.” So, what’s with Te’o and the fantasy girlfriend?

Monsignor Meth, the Breaking Bad priest. Turns out the monsignor was a sex-party-in-the-rectory-having cross-dresser before he was a meth-dealing-money-laundering-sex-toy-store owner. Fortunately, the Church had already removed him from his parish for the sex party in the rectory stuff. (Whew!) But … what’s with this guy?

Father Handcuffs, the 911 caller. Odd as this sounds, my main question about Father Handcuffs is why he didn’t call a friend to get him out of his rig instead of 911. My family and I were discussing this at dinner the other night (my kids are adults, and our dinner table conversations are, always have been, free-ranging) and one of my sons said, “Why didn’t he call anybody — even his mother — before he called 911?” All this leads me to think that Father Handcuffs, in addition to being a bit of a kink, may be a lonely man.

Mark Sanford the I-lied-when-I said-I-was-hiking-the-Appalachian-Trail-I-was-really-in-Argentina-with-my-girlfriend Governor. Now, with said girlfriend at his side and his wife and four children … somewhere else … the former governor says he’s running for Congress. Where he should fit right in.

Mel Gibson the brilliant actor/director who truly and absolutely cannot hold his liquor, a weakness that combines with his love affair with hidden microphones to make for sordid tapes.

And all those famous men — politicians, footballs players, etc — who keep sending photos of their private parts to women who don’t want to see them.

Were people always this crazy and the internet has just forced them on us, or, is someone putting some sort of mental whoopee cushion in the drinking water? I ask you, what’s with these people?