Lexington Herald-Leader: Every village used to have an idiot. Now every idiot has the Internet.
By BERRY CRAIG
“Before the Internet, every village had an idiot,” mused Tom Nickell, a Facebook friend. “After the Internet, the idiots have their own village.”
“Covidiot” is a variant of “village idiot.” A Covidiot has been defined as somebody “who acts like an irresponsible idiot during the COVID-19 pandemic, ignoring common sense, decency, science, and professional advice leading to the further spread of the virus and needless deaths of thousands.”
“It’s amazing that just a couple of thousand people in a nation of 330 million can have such an influence because of the Internet,” said Tom’s brother, David, a sociology professor at West Kentucky Community and Technical College in Paducah, where I taught history for two dozen years. “We’ve been talking about this in class.”