Where's the outrage over drunk driving?

Yep. It's the same reason certain people don't get outraged at politicians who have extra-marrital affairs and such: Cause they're doing it, too.

Even the biggest of hypocrites struggles to bash someone who gets caught for the very same thing he/she is doing. If the truth were known, the number of people who drink and drive would be staggering.

 

As Dick points out, there's plenty of well-organized outrage in this country over drunken driving, and has been since at least the founding of MADD in 1980.

One could just as easily ask "where's the outrage over lung cancer?" or "where's the outrage over the eating of fatty red meats and the cardiac deaths that result from it?" or "where's the outrage over the manufacture of automobiles, since they kill 50,000 Americans a year?"

Where's the outrage over false equivalencies?

 

Jim Leyritz, chairperson.

 

I think what Stitch meant to write was, "Why isn't everyone who is railing against Sarah Palin and nasty political rhetoric also railing against CEOs of alcohol companies, like I do every day??"

 

Speaking of texting and driving, how many of you have continued to text someone after you knew they were behind the wheel? Do you consider it irresponsible for you to do so?

 

What happened to holding people responsible for their own actions? Why must it be the alcohol companies' fault someone was drinking and driving? Why is it the tobacco companies' fault for manufacturing cigarettes when the healthy warnings are right on the package?

At some point don't we need to look at someone who dies of lung cancer caused by smoking and say, 'sorry, but it was your choice'?

This irritates me more than just about anything. Always looking for someone else to blame instead of looking at the person in the mirror. We all have the choice to drink or not drink, smoke or not smoke, eat red meat and be lazy or workout like an Olympic athlete. Hold the people who make the choices responsible.

 

Someone discovered the concept of "the logical fallacy of false choice" so we stopped committing us. Well, most of us.

You can simultaneous hold people responsible for their choices *and* criticize people who influence them.

 

Exactly. Yes, smokers are responsible for their own actions, but that doesn't mean you can't hold tobacco companies responsible as well. They produce, market and distribute products that kill people and they rely heavily on getting their customers hooked when they are way too young to be making life and death decisions.

Find a way to make sure the laws against people smoking before they turn 18 and I would have a much harder time blaming tobacco companies for the damage their products do. How many people smoke their first cigarette after they turn 18? Seriously, does anybody even know? I bet it is a damn small percentage.

 

Nice rant, but it's not either/or, it's both/and.

 

Where is the outrage over cockdians?

After all, whenever a team doesn't become a charmion, some pussy eaten cockdian like Peyton Manning never gets blamed.

 

Here's my problem with current laws regarding driving under the influence of alcohol:

The laws do a great job of catching a 120-pound woman who has had two glasses of Chard at happy hour, then gets pulled over for one of those license/registration checks that pass for DUI stings that are so prevalent in our area.

But the laws don't do a thing to stop some asshole who has had five suspensions, three revokations as a result of multiple DUI convictions who still swills two six-packs and gets behind the wheel of a car anyway.

I don't know the answer. But it's not what we have now. Because good people I know have had their lives ruined (at least in the short term) because they had a couple of drinks (hardly enough to cause them to weave or crash), got pulled over, barely blew the legal minimum and got hauled in.

 

Hondo, what you say is probably true everywhere. It certainly is here in N.C.