Not The Damn Fool’s Fault

Even more than hearing about the chemically-enhanced woes of Lindsay and Britney and Paris and Nicole and Anna Nicole and–well the list is seemingly endless–what I mind is the reaction to how they got there.  As recent poll says that 79% of the American public blames the money.  Pundits blame the bars for serving the underage, or the handlers who

Even more than hearing about the chemically-enhanced woes of Lindsay and Britney and Paris and Nicole and Anna Nicole and–well the list is seemingly endless–what I mind is the reaction to how they got there.  As recent poll says that 79% of the American public blames the money.  Pundits blame the bars for serving the underage, or the handlers who get these celebutants whatever they want, or the families that exerted not enough (or too much) control, to the media, or…well just about everyone and everything.  Except the people themselves.

That’s right.  I blame Lindsay and Britney and Paris and Nicole and Anna Nicole and all the rest for their own problems. I may not be young now, but when I was, I was surrounded by the youthful temptations of alcohol, coke, PSP, LSD, uppers, downers, pot, meth, X, and others just as easily available as today.  And while Nancy Reagan’s simplistic admonition to "Just Say No" is laughable, there is a huge element of truth.  I said no…and to very good friends, too.  Basically, it’s that a person is responsible to do what they know is the right thing.  They are responsible to take personal responsibility.

Guess what…?  Life’s tough.  It’s tough if you’re moneyed.  It’s tough if you’re poor.  It’s tough when you’re a teenager.  It’s tough when you’re in middle-age.  It’s just plain tough.  Almost no one has a la-dee-da sort of life.  So when people use their life circumstances as an excuse, I can’t help but roll my eyes.

Does that sound unreasonably harsh?  Perhaps it is.  But I remember a time when, if a person stuck their hand into the grass outtake of a running lawn mower and subsequently got their hand cut off, people would shake their heads, say it was a damn fool thing to do, and acknowledge that the person was a damn fool for doing it.  Now, we’d immediately blame the lawn mower manufacturer for making unsafe equipment AND for not posting enough warnings.  We’d blame the education system for not adequately teaching the damn fool the consequences of flesh meeting up with sharpened steel spinning at a high rate of speed.  We’d blame the family for not giving sufficient supervision.  We’d blame the doctors for not doing enough to save the hand.  But the one thing we wouldn’t do is blame the damn fool….it might hurt his feelings, and hasn’t he suffered enough?

People make mistakes.  I have no problem with that.  The young don’t have a corner on that, and they certainly make their fair share while trying to figure out the type of person they want to be.  But making the same mistake over an over again…that’s just being a damn fool.  Getting falling-down drunk once, maybe twice, is youthful folly.  But after that, after the consequences are known, it is a choice.  It’s the same for the other drugs.  Unless you’re slipped or forced to ingest almost-immediately-addictive substances such as meth, or oxy, or crack…well, then you’ve made a choice and I’m not going to be crying a lot of tears about how you or others try to justify it.  You made a choice.  And you make make another choice to stop continuing.

Even so, the business owners who don’t police who’s taking their intoxicating wares need to be prosecuted.  The handlers and assistants who aide and abet these illegal behaviors need to be prosecuted.  The celebutants who actually instigate and participate in these behaviors need to be prosecuted.  More…the press needs to then start ignoring them.  Do not romanticize these damn fools…that just makes you damn fools yourselves.