Everything that is Wrong with America...and then some

(I wrote this post on the plane back from London)

They say that nothing good is ever on airline TV. I disagree. Today I watched two excellent movies, The Last King of Scotland and All the King’s Horses. I guess you could say that I was in a political mood today. Regardless, that’s not what I’m writing about.

With less than the time it takes to watch a full movie, I decided to turn on a TV show, and selected 30 Days: Binge Drinking. Two words: Fuck you Morgan Spurlocker. Ok that’s four words. Anyway, we follow this suburban housewife that doesn’t drink and see the effects of her binge drinking for 30 days. Morgan informs us that binge drinking is four drinks in two hours. Ok, not a problem, except that the daughter is a total sorority slut and mom is an extreme lightweight. P.S. this takes place at Arizona State.

The premise of this show is that college students are alcoholics and we need to change the system. Yeah well you guys did it too.

On the first night, Mom drinks a bottle of wine in two hours, and gets pretty hammered. She then throws up in the middle of the night, and was a complete disaster the whole next day. Yes, if that happened to all us college students, that would be a problem. Also, mom, your life is very boring. An exact quote from the show: “Mom’s life went from housework and exercise to drinking and hangovers”. Shit, that sounds like an upgrade to me.

Oh here’s an update. The nurse that Mom goes to in order to see how she’s holding up is a recovered alcoholic. Wow, sounds just a little set up to me.

The show keeps talking about how mom isn’t showing the dangers of drinking to her kid. Maybe it’s because ‘*gasp* drinking isn’t bad for you. I must say, though, Daughter is pretty hot, but daughter’s friend has a pretty bad nosejob.

My god, I think this is just about the least convincing argument to stop drinking ever. And daughter agrees. The worst part is, the majority of the time, mom looks like she’s having an absolutely fantastic time when she goes out, with a voiceover saying this is bad. You know how to reduce binge drinking, let kids drink younger. American youth have the rate of alcoholism ever. And we also have the highest drinking age, with the exception of one of those Mid-Eastern nations that doesn’t allow women to drive.

I had a very interesting conversation with a publord in Paris. Yeah, that’s right, I go all the way to Paris and find the one Scottish pub to sit in for 4 hours. Shocking, I know. So we’re sitting there, and all of a sudden these French schoolchildren just walk on in and sit down. They don’t drink. They don’t try. The drinking age is 16 there, and they don’t even try to break it. The publord told me that they try to get them to drink, but they don’t. So what I learned out of that is responsible drinking from a younger age will foster responsible drinking habits throughout life. It’s this reactionary conservative propaganda that is the reason that the system is changing. There, that’s right, Morgan Spurlocker, your show added to the binge drinking culture, and strengthened it. The complete opposite of what you wanted to do. Why? Because you’re an idiot.