When bullies made this woman cry, 20,000 people rallied to support her

By David McElroy · June 22, 2012

Karen Klein is a bus monitor on a school bus in suburban Rochester, N.Y., but she probably feels more like a Christian who’s been thrown to the lions — because the kids she deals with are vile, filthy-mouthed and just plain mean.

On Monday, one of the middle school kids who rides the bus recorded video of various students taunting Klein and making fun of her weight, her clothes and her purse, among other things. It’s disgusting to watch, but you can see it below. Even after it’s obvious that she’s crying, they continue to taunt her.

One of the most heart-breaking parts is when a student says she doesn’t have a family, because they all committed suicide so they wouldn’t have to be around her. Klein’s oldest son did commit suicide 10 years ago, so she said this was the most hurtful thing the kids said to her. We have no idea whether they knew about her son’s suicide.

If this is where the story ended, I’m not sure I’d even be sharing it with you. When I first saw the video on Wednesday, I thought it was too depressing to write about. But then someone took it upon himself to help Klein — and the results have been amazing.

When Toronto nutritionist Max Sidorov saw the video online, he wanted to do something to help the bullied woman who he identified with.

“I saw the video and really felt for Karen,” Max Sidorov told USA Today. “I have some experience with bullying from when I was young and what they were doing to her was just heartbreaking. The best thing I could think to do was start a fundraiser to send her on vacation.”

Sidorov thought he might be able to raise a few thousand dollars for Klein, so he set a goal of $5,000 on a page at fundraising site IndiGoGo. As of late Thursday night, the campaign had raised an incredible $427,006 from roughly 20,000 donors.

I don’t know what’s going to be done with all that money. I doubt anyone knows right now. (Klein’s daughter has joined the fundraising campaign as an administrator with Sidorov.) Klein only makes about $15,000 a year with her job, so I’m sure some of the money would be nice for her. I suspect some of it will eventually be used for something else, but who knows?

For me, the important thing is that people saw someone being bullied and wanted to help. The story shows one of the ugliest sides of humanity and one of the best sides. People can be brutally cruel and evil, but they can also be generous and supportive.

There’s a strong temptation to draw conclusions about societal problems from this video, and I’m not quite sure what I think about that. There’s a part of me that wants to believe that some kids have always been like this — always cruel and mean when they could get away with it. But when I think back to my own experiences, I can’t think of anything comparable, and I can’t imagine my peers doing something such as that to an adult — any adult, much less one in an authority position. The very fact that Klein didn’t even bother to report the behavior to the school says a lot about the low expectations she had of getting any help or support.

Some of the kids involved are now getting harassed. There are even reports of death threats against at least one of them. I don’t condone those threats, of course, but I have a lot of trouble finding too much sympathy after watching what they did to Karen Klein.

What conclusions can we draw from this? People are mean and evil. People are also loving and kind. The fact that we all have a little bit of each extreme is the toughest thing to understand about humanity.

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On a live awards show Sunday night, one man made a joke about a female celebrity. The husband of the celebrity was offended and hit the man who made the joke. Or maybe it was staged for entertainment. Who knows? Who cares? Social media is full of discussion — and even arguments — about this idiocy today. This baffles me. Let’s assume for a moment that the event happened as reported. People have been having such idiotic fights ever since there have been humans. Half the bars in the world see such brief dustups regularly. It simply doesn’t matter. The fact that so many people believe they need to talk about this — or even need to have opinions about it — is more evidence of the bizarre media brainwashing that convinces many to care passionately about brain-dead trivia. Your life will be happier and saner if you focus on yourself, your family and your friends, not on whatever scripted (or spontaneous) bilge that the media wants to pipe into your home.

I’m in the middle of migrating this website to new servers this week. This means you might encounter some unexpected behavior until I get all the bugs worked out. Clicking on my links (including this one) might cause your browser to give you the message that it’s a site without a current security certificate. It’s not actually unsafe, but there’s something which isn’t yet set up for the security certificate. I apologize for any such errors you might encounter while the process is going on. If you notice any problems with content which didn’t migrate properly, I would appreciate you letting me know the details at davidmcelroy@mac.com. Thanks for your patience.

I often wonder what animals think when they look at us and consider the society we’ve created. Yes, I know this is fanciful and unrealistic, but what if they could? Would they be astounded at how we treat each other? Would they be disgusted by the ugliness and pettiness which fill so many of our daily interactions? The truth is that I’m feeling pretty disgusted with humanity tonight. I made the mistake of reading some online interactions that I should have avoided — and it sickened me. The people involved appeared to be vile and stupid and arrogant. I wish I could pretend they’re a tiny minority, but I know better. It’s times such as this when I most need to escape much of “civilization” and disconnect from their world. If humans are going to be worthy of “ruling this planet,” we have a lot of growth to do. And I fear that growth is nowhere in sight. So my buddy Thomas, above, and all of his friends would be right to judge us harshly — and to think, “Why do you folks get to be in charge?”

I should have expected this, but I honestly didn’t. The article I wrote last week about disagreements over treatment for autistic children brought me angry emails. You could almost call it “hate mail.” Of the five emails about it so far, two have been to tell me that I’m wrong to even listen to critics of the most popular therapy for autistic children — and the other three tell me I’m wrong for not condemning the treatment as the “obvious” abuse it is. If you read the article, you know I didn’t take a position on the issue, because I simply don’t know enough to have an opinion. But by talking about the issue, I stepped into a heated controversy. The emails from the two sides convinced me of nothing. But they did give me even more empathy for the unfortunate parents who have to figure out for themselves where the truth lies for their children.

Have you ever had what you thought was a new idea — and then discovered that “old you” had the same idea years ago? I had that experience tonight. And it’s been wonderful. I came up with an idea tonight for a very short satirical film that would be a promotion for a fictitious college. The point is to make the college promote — as good things — everything which is actually terrible about most modern colleges. Then I remembered a fake college that I invented back when I was in college. I had created student recruitment brochures and various newsletters back then, so I decided to call my “new” college by the same name I’d invented years ago: Ochita College. As I searched my computer for any old material I might still have about Ochita from the past, I discovered an email I sent to someone in 2009 — outlining essentially the same idea which I came up with tonight. Since I didn’t remember writing that, it felt like magic. So my next film project just might be this one instead. If all goes well, you might soon see “Ochita College: Your Future Starts Here.” This should be fun.

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