Blame the son

I used to work in radio, and I can attest that it's a business that often times attracts the sort of people who are not quite nailed down tightly enough.

Not speaking about you, Ann Coulter!  You're doing just fine, if being a vile enormity was your goal.

This fellow on the local classic rock station, Stephen Smith, went by the air name "Stash" and was on 98 Rock for more than 20 years, until this past summer, when he plowed his car into a chain-reaction collision that left a few fellow citizens injured and inconvenienced to a great degree.  The radio station fired him for this.  Radio is a numbers business, and this sort of bad publicity was likely to affect their ratings numbers.  Here are some other numbers that station management should have considered earlier: 1, 32, and 56.  1 being the number of marijuana arrests he has in his folder, 32 being the number of prior traffic convictions he has racked up, and 56 being the number of payable tickets he has had.

And yet, last July 22, he was legal to drive a car in the state of Maryland, although he had no insurance (wonder why).  On that evening, his wife found him drunk in their Bel Air home and told him to get out, which he did.  And he drove to where Rt 24 and I-95 meet and slammed into history, tossing a can of Four Loko out of his car, denying that he had alcohol, and then admitting to it.

So now, because he could not control his alcohol intake,  he's off to the Ironbar Hilton for six months, he has lost his job, he owes legal bills like the size of Fergie's plastic surgery tab, and things are looking pretty bleak for him, his wife and his five children.

I've seen people who can't control their boozing and it is a damned shame.  Not to put myself on a pedestal, because I don't do so well when it comes to following a proper food diet.  I guess I'm lucky; I like a beer with dinner, and if we go someplace that does not serve beer, I don't miss it one little bit.  Persons dealing with alcoholism have to fight the urge to dilute their bloodstreams all day and all night.  It's tough. 

But.  You read the attached article and his attorney is saying that the former DJ sank into the sauce because of the stress of dealing with a severely autistic son, to which I say this:  there are millions of parents who deal with millions of burdens without reaching for the bottle to get them through, and I surely hope that no one tells the son involved that his dad blames all this trouble on the situation that the young man lives with every day and night.

A man owns up to his problems and owns his problems and takes care of them the best he can.  With the same hand that he used to throw away the Four Loko can, he is pointing now at his son and blaming him for the whole sad story.  It's hardly the mature approach. In fact, it's despicable.  I hope that after he gets out of the tank, he goes somewhere and gets serious help, and then spends the rest of his life trying to restore his family.