SheSez: When is it ok to be an asshole?

Sorry for the language, but "jerk" doesn't quite have the same ring to it.

I've been meditating on our (society's) penchant for cutting certain undeserving individuals a lot of slack. I'm not talking about the fact that we are so easily star-struck by the likes of...Lindsay Lohan? What disturbs me more is the canonizing of the mediocre misanthrope.

Take Steve Jobs, for example. Wozniak did the tech work, Jobs did the marketing. Wozniak tried to spread the wealth among peripheral participants. He gave his money away from the get-go. Jobs stole from his partners, taunted and lied to his employees, and apparently enjoyed wielding his power and influence in ways that would humiliate and defeat friend/relative/acquaintance/competitor/whomever. And yet everything good about Apple now seems to be associated with Jobs.

Even in his personal life, Jobs was a hypocrite of the highest order. And a jerk. What grates are the reverential murmurings in the media that describe the man as a genius, while brushing off his malevolent nature as the quirkiness of a great mind.

Bah humbug! Dare I say it? The world would have been just fine had Steve Jobs never walked the earth. I never wished him ill, but seriously, what did he actually contribute? He was a jerk.

Perhaps you could care less, but let's take an example that is closer to home. Your doctor. Do you revere him or her? Even if not, do you cut her/him lots of slack? Is it ok for your doctor to treat you like skunk poop? Or to keep you waiting for two hours?

A few years ago, I asked my father's neurologist a technical question about my father's stroke and the neurologist responded, "If I tell you the answer what makes you think you will understand it?"

If it had been I lying in that hospital bed instead of my father, I would have fired that doctor's ass. I refuse to be terrorized and disrespected by an entire profession, members of which (in my experience) can't tell a Form 1040 from credit card application.

In the unlikely event I die as a consequence of demanding respect from an arrogant doctor, then I'll die a happy woman. That's because Durfee will sue his ass!