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Actions, excuses and the apologies

By JAN GLIDEWELL
Published November 13, 2006

To put these remarks in proper perspective, I have to note that conspicuous consumption of alcohol was (except at fraternity parties and Florida-Georgia football games) more socially acceptable a couple of decades ago than it is today.

A considerable part of the rehashing of the company Christmas party around the coffeepot or watercooler had to do with breathless retellings of who was the drunkest and who committed the most outrageous acts and drove themselves home after having gotten mistakenly into the back seat and staggering out to complain that the steering wheel had been stolen.

And, yes, in my time, I was probably the subject of more of those stories than the teller. Howard Wolinsky, a reporter at the Chicago Sun-Times now but who once worked at the St. Petersburg Times, even sent a special missive to my retirement party three years ago, proving that some embarrassing memories (actually a collection of them) do come back to haunt you after 33 years.

In fact there is an old newspaper yarn about the editor who says he doesn't mind if his reporters drink (it was only his, never hers back then) because he would rather have people think they were drunk than stupid.

Things that made you a newsroom legend back then now just get people into small groups talking behind their hands and wondering if you have "a problem."

Eventually social pressures based on health, legal and moral concerns (it is immoral to drive your car when you are too drunk to control it) made most of us moderate our drinking behavior. It was only then that we looked around and realized that some of us could stop and some of us couldn't. Some of those who couldn't eventually did. Some of them are dead.

My point (and yes, you knew I would eventually get to it, didn't you?) is that I had to apologize frequently for things that I said and did during those years. And most of those apologies began with such phrases as, "I know being drunk is no excuse and I am sorry that I (insert your favorite repulsive type of behavior here)".

Now, apparently, being drunk or stoned or both is an excuse, and its getting one of the great workouts of all time.

Recently it has been used to explain one U.S. representative crashing his car into a barrier on Capitol Hill and another sending inappropriate e-mails to congressional pages, and by the priest who allegedly molested the second congressman while the congressman was an altar boy.

It has been used by Mel Gibson as an excuse for his anti-Semitic ranting to a Los Angeles County sheriff's deputy and by state Rep. Ralph Arza for leaving obscene voice messages berating a colleague who had taken him to task earlier for using the N-word in reference to the colleague.

It has been used by Hillsborough Tax Collector Doug Belden to explain why he groped a woman at a Tampa bistro.

A few days later it was a fundamentalist minister who, during a way-station stop en route to the whole truth, intimated that his conversations with a male prostitute were only for the purposes of obtaining a massage and methamphetamine.

It's a great message for today's youth, many of whom are regularly besieged with antidrug and antialcohol messages from the ends of the political and religious spectrums represented by all but one of the above. (U.S. Rep. Patrick Kennedy is a Democrat and, well, pretty liberal.)

So we should be somewhat comforted by one of the facts surrounding the uttering of bigoted remarks by Hernando County Commissioner Tom Hogan Sr. and his wife, Mary Ann, referring to Islam as a 'hateful, frightening religion" and, in Tom Hogan's case, saying there is "some truth" to the statement that all terrorists are Muslims. My God, can these people even spell IRA, or UDA (Ulster Defense Association) or Shining Path or Red Guard or ... get the point?

It should go without saying that no major religious body (including those at odds over what kind of Christian it is best to be) should be held responsible for the fanatical acts of its most zealous salient.

And people in positions of political and government responsibility should be looking for peaceful interaction rather than raving bigoted nonsense.

But the Hogans have stuck to their guns so far and have not used the excuse that they were drunk or stoned.

Remembering that old story about the editor and the alternative theory for their actions, I will state readily that I don't believe they were drunk or stoned either.

[Last modified November 13, 2006, 06:38:30]