A former president of MADD, as in "Mothers Against Drunk Driving", has been arrested for, yep, you guessed it, drunk driving. <a class="postlink" href="http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504083_162-20036544-504083.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504083_162- ... 04083.html</a> Ha! Bitch. FOCUS: Discuss hypocrisy and share your run-ins with "do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do" people or situations. ALT-FOCUS: Discuss MADD. For? Against? Meh?
Myself, I'm all for personal responsibility and moderation, and believe that the drinking laws are Draconian. But call me crazy.
Focus: Politicians. Hypocrisy exists in all parties and if you think it doesn't in yours then that makes you a hypocrite by definition. Also, I'm a practicing Catholic and there is major hypocrisy in the institution of the Church, that is nothing new. Unfortunately that reflects very poorly on the public image, especially when the Vatican never takes an outward vocal stance against it. One personal example is my priest was a very inspirational guy. He would go on and on in his sermons about sanctity and duty to God, yadda yadda yadda. Shortly after he left our parish for another one, he was arrested in New York City for using church funds to buy expensive hotel rooms, hookers, and blow. He may have been Charlie Sheen in disguise.
It's not MAD. It's MADD. The moms are not against drinking - just drinking and driving. (Well, not her, obviously, but that's what the organization is about.) So, the drinking laws may be Draconian, but the drinking and driving laws are not. Also, MADD might get more support if the M stood for MILF instead of Mother. (And, yes, I realize MILF already stands for something.) So, I support being against drinking and driving, but I'm against hypocrisy.
Every MADD campaign I've seen recently has been about not drinking in the first place. They may have started as being against drinking and driving, but they've expanded their focus, at least from what I've seen in BC and Ontario. For instance, they've pushed dry grads, not responsible transportation options. Obviously, I'm against drinking and driving as well, as is just about every normal human being with 2 brain cells.
From what my lawyer told me during my DUI trial their true power comes from their lobbying efforts in the courts system. They keep tabs on all the outcomes of the bench trials and have rating systems for the judges. If a judge is looking for a higher court appointment MADD can come in and lobby against the appointment if they feel he/she was too lenient on DUI cases. This was one thing my lawyer took into account when we found out who our judge would be and whether or not we'd go for a jury or bench trial. I have too give it too them for employing effective methods to get their agenda accomplished. On the other hand some of their zero tolerance mentality is counterproductive.
I think the drinking age should be lowered to 18 and the hysteria surrounding it should be reduced, since all it does is promote more of a mystery around alcohol and keeps people from treating it casually. However, I agree with MADD in that I think drinking and driving laws should be tightened up considerably. Accidents where another party is injured should be treated as assault with a deadly weapon. First time violators should be given BIG fines and licenses should be revoked for substantial terms, second time violators should have mandatory substantial jail time and have licenses taken away for multiple years. Make it draconian. Make people scared of having a beer and getting in their car. It'd be a huge pain in the ass but I don't see any other way to keep people off the street after drinking. Make taxi fare a built-in cost to drinking.
The organization started out as a mother who'd lost a child to a drunk driver, yes. Since then, it's run by men (by definition not mothers) and the original founder has come out against MADD saying that they've turned into a bunch of prohibitionists and moved away from the cause of just drunk driving. <a class="postlink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mothers_Against_Drunk_Driving#Shift_from_reducing_DUI_to_reducing_alcohol_use" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mothers_Ag ... lcohol_use</a> On the topic of drunk driving, I've seen some claims from questionable sources (modern drunkard magazine) that the current stats on drunk driving accidents are completely fucked. As in, they will count an accident as "alcohol-related" if the not-at-fault driver had any alcohol in his system, or accidents where passengers are intoxicated but not the driver, as well as some other shady practices to make the problem look worse than it is. It seems pretty possible that the stats aren't quite as accurate as they should be.
I'll tell you one of the things that really pisses me off is watching a cop drive like a moron and yet pull over someone to give them a ticket for no front plate. (Oh wait, that would have been me getting the ticket). I've always thought that if you're a cop, you should be held to a higher standard. Simple driving rules are regularly broken; speeding, lack of signalling, texting while driving, and it goes on and on. I wish there was some way to hold them accountable for their actions, or at least get them to be more like the old-school cops that were actually someone you'd look up to for help, rather than pieces of shit tax collectors. Want to get REALLY pissed? Watch this: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.cbc.ca/fifth/2010-2011/youshouldhavestayedathome/index.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.cbc.ca/fifth/2010-2011/yoush ... index.html</a> It's a CBC documentary on the bullshit actions taken by a large number of the cops working at the G20 summit in Toronto recently. There were a lot of criminal actions taken by the cops, and yet it's not being addressed. It was so bad that a large number of them didn't even wear their name tags or badges for fear of being recognizable. It's not like I hate cops, but there are fewer "reasonable" cops around, it seems to me.
John Stewart nailed it pretty well when talking about Mark Zuckerberg... (I'm not thinking clearly enough to come up with something else right now) http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-january-6-2011/the-anti-social-network
I got sufficiently pissed off at the hypocracy of state troopers speeding and tailgating that I tracked down the e-mail address of someone in the equivalent of internal affairs and began reporting cops I saw doing it based on their cruiser numbers, date, time, location, etc. More lighthearted, as a kid/teen my mom would get really mad and, at the top of her lungs, scream "THERE IS NEVER AN EXCUSE FOR YELLING!!!!" at me.
If I'm shitfaced and plow my truck into a helpless minivan full of baby unicorns, sunshine, and happiness, how is that any different than if I looked down to fiddle with the radio or send out a text and plowed into the helpless minivan? You could argue, and I would agree, that the text or radio fiddling is more "accidental", and as such should be judged less harshly as the dickhole that pounded 2 pints of whiskey and went for a joyride. I just disagree with the ridiculous punishments some people get for blowing a .09, only discovered cause they rolled a stop sign. I've seen idiotic soccer moms blabbing on their cell phones drive worse than a "legally intoxicated" person. I'm not condoning drinking and driving, by any means. I just think it's fucked up that if I have 2-3 beers while out to dinner, I could be over the legal limit on the drive home. MADD started out as useful, helpful organization that has now been hijacked by prohibitionists and bureaucrats. It's bullshit the influence they have now.
The Mrs. got one of those bullshit tickets as well. (in a fucking target parking lot by a fuckin bored piece of garbage that was just cruising the shopping centers around Xmas looking for free money) I called the court and explained that the dmv had only issued us 1 plate and that particular car doesn't even have a place for 1 and that I wasn't willing to drill in to the front mask because of all the sensors, electronics, and whatnot that I am not qualified to fuck with. Their response was "too bad for you, now pay up" I didnt pay. Fuck them. They got the last laugh when they garnished my tax refund. Dicks. What were we talking about again? Oh ya, Morons Advocating Dry Days. While started with a noble purpose, MADD has morphed in to a neo prohibitionist organization. The courts are only too eager to support them as stricter laws lead to more control and more money in municipal coffers. I don't think that a rational, thinking human being can argue that driving while having little or no control of your waking mind is OK, but i also don't believe that prohibition is a good idea again. It worked so well the first time, remember? Personal responsibility is the answer. Not social engineering thru lobbyists, multimillion dollar campaign contributions and ad campaigns. MADD is the alcoholic version of PETA. In short....just as abusing animals and driving when you shouldn't is wrong.....both organizations are so far off their original mission that they can eat a fat dick.
I don't know about a lot of the people out there, but I think the punishment for a DUI is pretty spot on. I got one about 3-4 years ago, and to this day I have never driven after having more than 1 or 2 beers (not even close to the legal limit), and even that took a couple years. Everything I went through was a pain in the ass and scared the hell out of me, I have no idea how people can get more than one DUI. That's just me though. Of course that is one thing I'm pretty hypocritical about right there. I won't even dare driving after drinking, but I won't bat an eye about getting in the car with my girlfriend or one of my buddies after we have been drinking all night. I've even had talks with my girlfriend about how I don't like it when she drives drunk, but then if it means me getting home from the bar, I'm all the sudden perfectly okay with it. I feel bad about it when I'm sober, but haven't tried to change anything about it yet. In suburban Oklahoma getting a taxi is such a pain in the ass that no one bothers with it and everyone drives when they shouldn't be. Hell, even my mom does it sometimes.
I'm writing this under "sober thread" (no pun intended) rules. If that's not the case with this thread, then please delete with my apologies. I'm a radicalized, anti-government, abolish-all-victimless-crimes crank, and I work for a police agency. The bald faced hypocrisy doesn't really lie in that. In as close to a perfect world as we could get, we'd still need cops (which I'm not; I just push the papers). It's the fact that I've taken an indefinite civil service job that makes me a flaming hypocrite; this is something that IMNSHO should not exist. Again, I'm a nutjob who would like to see the roads sold and the rules set by the owners, but as long as we maintain the fairy tale that we all own the roads I'm actually in favor of keeping drunk driving criminalized. I'd tweak it a little, of course: Lower the limit to .05, but .05 to .09 would be a petty traffic infraction. Something like .1 to .19 would carry penalties similar to what DUI does now. Above that, throw the fucking book at them. I'm talking the big house for a year or two, with a lot more on a second offense. It's the people driving falling-down drunk who actually kill people, rather than the "slightly impaired". I have my doubts about whether this would actually work. The consequences are stiff already, and people are still driving drunk in droves. As for MADD itself, meh. Their collective heart's obviously in the right place, but as has been said they've become yet another PITA special interest.
This hypocrisy surfaced a long time ago. Recognizing it for what it was, and being immature assholes, my friends and I had a bunch of shirts made up, similar to these: Except ours looked way cooler. Yes we wore them in public, and other than the stink eye from a few old women, drew no comments. Of course I engaged in my own hypocrisy about 10 years later when I got my DUI.
I'm pretty sure the woman with the DUI was former president of a local chapter, not the entire organization. Just clearing up some potential confusion. Anyway, yeah, the organization has become way too prohibitionist. It just doesn't work. We just need laws encouraging designated drivers (aka forget any graduated licenses; ie banning 16-18 year olds from driving a bunch of young people around -- you are outlawing designated drivers in this case). We also need to invest in some better public transit in this country. Outside of NYC and to a degree Chicago, the public transportation of many major cities is shit. Smaller cities have even shittier systems. Probably need to get more serious about DUI penalties, too. Some states it's a slap on the wrists until you've mowed down a few kids.
There was a case a few years ago in Toronto where an old woman crossing the street was run over by a cop. How did this happen? Well, in a perfectly quiet intersection, the cop was sitting in the left hand turn lane at a red light. All of a sudden, he turns right across two lanes of traffic to make what would have been a right turn and smokes an old lady crossing the street. He did not turn his sirens on, he wasn't answering an emergency call - there was no reason given as to why he pulled the move. The last I heard, there hadn't been any disciplinary action taken. Fucking bullshit. On the other hand, when Julian Fantino was the chief of police in Toronto, officers were fined 8 hours' pay if a picture of them was published in a newspaper / other media source without their cap on.
Drink driving laws in Australia piss me right off. The legal limit here is 0.05 which is around 0.8 of a beer every hour… it used to be 0.08 years ago so you could at least relax with a beer and know you would be under the limit. The worst part about the whole system is the guess work. If the police are going to give large fines and licence disqualifications for being slightly over the limit (0.055 for example) then there should be access to calibrated breathalysers in pubs and restaurants etc. Especially since the cops set up random breath test stations all over the place. I understand that the alcohol in your blood rises for a while (I think an hour) after your last drink but it would give responsible people trying to have a glass of wine or pint of beer with dinner a chance to wait it out if they were slightly over the limit. Also, if the government are serious about saving lives and stopping drink driving, subsidies the cost of taxis and get more of them on the road. I live 20 minutes from the city and a taxi on a Friday or Saturday night sets me back around $60 one way. Plus if you stay until past midnight there is a good chance you will be waiting over an hour for a taxi. No wonder so many people run the gauntlet. Driving home when you are blind drunk and can hardly walk is fucking stupid and dangerous, throw the book at people that do this by all means but give people trying to do the right thing some options.
Here in Eugene, Oregon there really is nothing called .08. They say on all the billboards that buzzed driving is drunk driving. I looked up what their movement was all about and basically if a cop suspects you had a drink, even under .08, he can give you a duii. Duii laws here are very strict at least in my case and I sure as hell wont be doing that again.