>One childhood friend recalled a time when Sherman committed insurance fraud. He described driving on a highway with Sherman when they were 16. Suddenly, Sherman told his friend to "buckle up." He slammed on the brakes and caused an accident. Later, the friend says, Sherman would collect thousands of dollars from insurance companies for the self-inflicted injuries.
Fuck the dude.
The guy was 16 at the time. It even says he had a rough childhood. Are you really going to post "Fuck the dude" when you know nothing of the situation or what actually happened? Clearly, he was immature at the time, but I don't think judging a person by what they did at 16 years of age is very appropriate.
A rough childhood is not an excuse, if you're old enough to have a driving license then you're old enough to think through the consequences of slamming on your brakes at highway speeds.
There is stupid and there is malicious, this is way beyond stupid. After all, he did tell his friend to buckle up which indicates he was aware of the risk, did he tell the people in the car behind him to buckle up as well?
No argument there. But I think it's not inconceivable that people who behaved like utter assholes in their youth can still turn out OK in adulthood - especially when "troubled" teenagers are involved who come from screwed-up backgrounds. I believe there are still opportunities to turn your life around at that point, and if that's the case something you did when you were 16 shouldn't really matter by the time you turn 40. We were all different people a few years ago.
You talked about judicial intervention, so think about the fact that most countries have special provisions for young offenders. Often records of things committed at that age are later expunged. I know I'm taking a lot of flak for this unpopular opinion, and it may well be because I disagreed with a minor celebrity, but I really believe that the judicial system is doing something right here (for a change). Judging adults on something they did two lives ago is not helpful.
It was wrong of him, yes. Being young (only 16 years old) and in debt probably took a huge emotional toll on him, though...don't you think? Again, what he did, IF true, wasn't right by any means but be a bit more understanding given the context. At least he went and made a respectable name for himself after. In the world we live in today, there are far worse stories that come from poor financial situations like this, namely crime.
I repeat: one action does not define a person. And for Jody, if we are assuming the article to be true, he seemed to be a pretty damn good person.
I know that's the usual party line, but why?
Most of us have ethical boundaries, such as "Don't intentionally risk our friends' lives" and "Don't fuck people up for money."
If you cross that boundary, even once -- or worse yet, those aren't boundaries for you at all -- that says a lot about you as a person.
A 16-year-old knows that it's wrong to commit insurance fraud. They also know it's wrong to purposefully cause a car accident. It's quite telling, really.
Of course, the same friend told a story about Jody giving boxes and boxes of clothing to homeless people during Christmas. Yet this tale didn't make the cut.
I think it's evidence that he needed help long before he committed suicide.
To be fair to the writer, that event was fraud by any definition of the word.
I don't get it. How can you tell that story in a lighthearted way? It's reckless endangerment at best.
Many people do awful things in the past. Young people (Jody was 16 here?) can be stupid & foolish. Hard to attribute that to the rest of his life with such a simple, "fuck the dude."