DEAR ABBY'S AT IT AGAIN

[Jerry D Mead]

Anna...I was a little flip with my answer to your question about keeping up with the political issues...one thing you can do is question any media story that sounds questionable, doesn't provide an authority (and then check up on it)and be especially on the look-out for euphemisims and double talk.

Example: Every holiday you get all this talk about alcohol-related accidents and fatalaties with numbers that are huge...the implication being that alchol CAUSED the accidents. That is not what alcohol-related means...it means someone (often the victim or a passenger) involved in the accident had been drinking.

Which means that a driver who had a couple of glasses of wine with dinner and just pulled up at a stop sign, to be rear-ended by a non-drinking descendant of Carrie Nation, would still cause the accident to be reported statistically as alcohol-related, when alcohol had absolutely nothing to do with causing the accident.

Question! Question! Question! When the local MADD chapter or headline seeking D.A. goes before the media to talk about the sting that caught some poor winery shipping wine to a 16 year old (at daddy's instigation and using daddy's credit card) and what a threat interstate shipping is to minors...ask how many real instances (not stings) of minors receiving such shipments have been reported/prosecuted in your state. Guess what? There hasn't been one in any state in 30 years. How do I know? Because I've been challenging the anti-alcohol forces to produce one for about that long, and if they could they would.

The Wine Curmudgeon