You can now get a ticket in Cleveland for driving a motor vehicle while smelling of alcohol. No matter if you pass the Breathalyzer with flying colors, they can and will fine you.
So what’s next? Cops arresting people for grand theft auto because they smell of gasoline? You may have noticed that drinkers are the last freely-oppressed legal group of citizenry. Even while we’re locked in a life-or-death struggle with terrorism and are forced to endure creepy commercials featuring Tom Ridge’s gigantic head telling us to brace ourselves for attacks upon our very dwellings, you most likely won’t come across any random roadblocks set up to catch terrorists.
You will, however, on any given holiday weekend, find thousands of roadblocks set up to snare drinkers who are driving too well to get pulled over (or get into an accident for that matter).
Nor will you find roadblocks set up to catch those who talk on their cell phones while driving. Which I find ironic because, according to yet another study, a driver talking on a cell phone (including the hands-free variety) is more dangerous than someone driving while legally drunk. I’m willing to bet that Wendy Hamilton, MADD’s current commandant, has a cell phone. Busy as she is wielding supreme power of her vast army of nogoodniks, we can assume she receives calls while driving her car. And I’ll bet you top shelf to bottom of the well that she talks on that goddamn phone while driving. I can picture it very easily.
Ring! Ring!
“What? What? Whaaat!”
“S-S-Sorry to disturb you, Madame President! But the numbers are in from the weekend round-up and —”
“What! Tell me!”
“We captured three percent fewer drunks than last year.”
“We—you—you traitor! I knew you were a spy all along! You stink of booze! I can smell it through the phone! Hooch Crime! Hooch Cr—HOLY SHIT!”
“What is it, my President?”
“I hit something! You distracted me and—oh my God!”
“What’s wrong, my—”
“For a second there I thought there was a decapitated human head in my lap. Oh my God! It’s still there!”
“Madame President? Hello? Should I—should I call the—”
(Sound of a human head being shoved out a window.)
“Call who? Why? It was just a . . . squirrel. Just a squirrel.”
