I have never watched "Jackass" on MTV or any of the movies. I feel the title accurately describes its target audience and probably has led to countless Darwin Award contestants getting put in the emergency room. So I saw the news on Twitter that one of its stars had died in a car crash with mild interest, though what was left of the car was jaw-dropping. I've seen plenty of bad car wrecks and scene photos, including ones where people were killed, and that was the worst I'd ever seen. All that was left was a small, twisted, burnt piece of metal. The body of the driver and passenger were burnt beyond recognition. He had to have been driving at a very high speed on impact to cause a car-b-que that bad.
Then a photo he Tweeted hours before his death surfaced and the guy was there, looking inebriated, holding a beer. As it turned out, he was very drunk, despite claims from the bartender and his companions. And not only was he very drunk, he was driving down a dark road at up to 140 mph.
It's never a good thing when people die at a young age but this wasn't a guy whose tire blew out. He was reckless moron who got himself and a friend killed. He could very well have killed more people had he struck someone else's car. It should be roundly and soundly condemned; it's too late to save the Jackass guy and his friend but we all need to be reminded of the toll drinking and driving can take.
But everybody pig piled on Roger Ebert for daring to point out what should have been obvious. Ebert has rubbed me the wrong way for a long time and perhaps his Tweet on the issue was too flip but give me a break with the ridiculous calls to "not make an example out of this," as one dumbass local DJ said as I listened on the way home from work. What? If you can't make an example to people that this is WRONG, I don't know what you can do to persuade people not to drink and drive. I have spent a lot of time helping make sure these lushes get what's coming to them so they don't plow their car into you at 140 mph the next time they're on the roads. If anything, I don't think we're tough enough on the chronic DUIs who pose the most danger to the public.
There was a lot of caterwauling about the sensitivities of the deceased's family and friends. Well, I doubt they were on the internet looking to see what people were saying, save for that moron Bam-Bam or whatever the hell he's called. And besides, so what? If there's any responsibility for bringing pain to family and friends, it rests squarely on the head of the guy driving the car.
Yet nobody wants to tell the truth. Nobody wants to be seen as mean or judgmental. But you would be plenty judgmental if a man sent his Porsche flying into a car carrying somebody you cared about. You'd want his butt tossed in prison forever if he managed to survive and you'd sue him for a billion dollars.
Not only have I handled DUI cases, I've also sat on a jury on a DUI case, and I've been acquainted with people who either killed themselves or were killed by others in drunk driving crashes. There was the girl in my high school class who got tanked at a club and drove right into a tree at 80 mph just days before graduation. She died on impact. There was the guy who was in one of my college classes who'd survived a head-on collision with a drunk who went the wrong way on an on ramp. The person riding with him was killed instantly. The drunk driver lived but was permanently paralyzed from the neck down. I've had close calls with people I think were probably inebriated. And I'm ashamed to say, in my young and dumb days, that I got into a car with people I didn't think were in any condition to drive. Boy am I lucky nothing happened.
As I said on my FB, drunk drivers suck.
