Jerk Thinks Reservist is a “Clown” and Doesn’t “Give a Shit Where He Is”

From the Seattle Times, I present you with quite possibly the biggest dickhead on the West Coast:

Burke Jensen moved to Kennewick about a year ago, bought a nice house in the country south of the city and began to settle into a new job at Energy Northwest.

Then came the call five months ago to serve his country in Kuwait.

So Jensen, who says he is an involuntarily mobilized reservist, headed off, leaving behind a pregnant wife, a young son and a 2.5-acre lot with not a spot of landscaping.

Now, Lt. Jensen is being told to get an irrigation system and landscaping on his property as soon as possible or face legal action from the Oak Hill Country Estates Homeowners’ Association.

“I really don’t give a [expletive] where he is or what his problem is,” said [the] owner and developer of the 47-lot subdivision at the south end of Oak Street in Kennewick.

“It doesn’t matter to me,” said [the owner]. [...] “[Jensen] doesn’t have the right to walk away from his obligation,” said [the owner], who as the developer is the only member of the homeowners association. “I have most of the property still, so I am the homeowners association,” he said.

[...]

DeAlicante said Jensen also would like to find a renter for his home, but [the owner] said that would be a commercial use not allowed by the homeowners association.

“He’s not going to rent it,” said [the owner].

[...]

“This is a contract. I don’t like the way his property looks. This clown gets to do what he wants, and I’m as mad as hell,” he said.

UPDATE 10/11/08: The commenters here aren’t the only ones who got pissed. Montgomery Construction Sprinkler Systems Specialists laid out curbing, a fabric weed barrier, and decorative stone, and on the 17th, they’re looking for volunteers to help lay out 18,000 square feet of sod that’s being delivered. They’ve had “dozens of volunteers and donations from at least a dozen businesses,” of plants, sod, rock, dirt, a loaner home security system, food for the workers, courtesy of Operation Thank You, Wood’s Nursery, C&M Nursery, Red Mountain Feed, Job’s Nursery, Bedrock, American Rock Products, Kennewick Industrial, United Pipe and Plumbing, Moon Security, Subway, Costco, Home Depot, Basin Sod, Fluor Hanford, military reservists, the Elks Club and the River View High School Panthers. If you have a HAPO Credit Union near you, you can make donations at any branch. (Wonderfully enough, the article has no comment whatsoever from [the owner], who evidently is a farmer of hay.) (Hat tip to Mike Hanscom of Eclecticism for the link!)

UPDATE 10/20/08: I’ve gone ahead and closed the comments a second time, and I’m grateful that I had the WordPress setting turned on where new commenters’ comments had to be approved before they were posted to the blog.

For God’s sake, people, twice now, I’ve had people try to post this guy’s home address and telephone number, and I’ve had a good number of other people make violent suggestions. None of these were published. (All of them were deleted internally, so even I don’t have them around any longer.)

I think that this guy’s behavior in this instance was an utterly despicable act. But I hate his behavior; I don’t hate him. That’s the way I was raised: if you hate, you hate what the person does, not the person. And even when people share my opinion on an issue, if they are blasting out unadulterated, foaming hate at someone, it’s … well, let’s put it this way. The Internet offers a few zillion ways to give you a soapbox on which to stand up and talk. But we each have control over our own soapboxes. There are some things I’m just not going to lend out my soapbox for.

Unadulterated hate doesn’t make anyone look good, or manly, or right. It didn’t make the owner look impressive, did it? Did you think any better of him while he was foaming at the mouth? Well, it doesn’t make those who hate him look impressive, either. You know who behaved impressively? All those people in the October 20th update (right above this) who actually went and did something constructive to help Lt. Jensen. If you want to show this twit what an utter asshole he is, go help them, if you’re geographically nearby them … or call HAPO Credit Union and ask if there’s a way you can donate to the Lt. Burke Jensen Landscaping Fund over the phone. Or find out how you can help Norma Nunamaker and Project Thank You (I can’t find linkage to point you towards) and help her out. That’s the way to best get back at this asshole — because by doing that, you’re helping out Lt. Jensen and our veterans at the same time.

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