Drunk Driving Is An American Tradition

Since it’s April Fool’s Day I was planning on writing a piece about how Nude Hippo’s World News Center had been picked up by CNN for international broadcast. I’d even added a group of special translators who would take my leaps of linguistic legerdemain and atrocious alliterations and make them comprehensible to the great unwashed. Naturally, Ashely Lobo would be the face of the program since, as everyone knows, I only have a face for radio.

Moreover, I had a spiffy slogan all worked out too; “CNN’s World News Center, where reality is pushed so far to the left, you know it’s right.”

There was even a bit about saber-toothed vegetarians that came with the obligatory naked PETA chick. I, for one, like looking at the naked PETA chicks while I’m eating a burger. It just makes me wall warm and fuzzy inside. And tingly in those special places as well.

But, alas and alack, I just couldn’t go through with it. You see, an April Fool’s article is supposed to be so over the top and wild that, while it tempts you to believe in it (like when Taco Bell claimed to have bought, and renamed, the Liberty Bell) you know deep inside that it’s meant to be funny.

However, reality is far more odd than anything my tiny mind could ever conceive so I set it aside and decided to write about something that actually happened. Ben Muessig reports that Montana Rep. Alan Hale is pro-drunk driving.

You see what I’m up against now, don’t you?

There are victims of drunken driving. And, according to one Montana legislator, there are victims of drunken driving laws.

While speaking out against a proposed bill that would make DUI laws more strict for repeat offenders, state Rep. Alan Hale, R–Basin, said drunken driving regulations hurt local businesses and are “destroying a way of life.”

“These DUI laws are not doing our small businesses in our state any good at all. They are destroying them,” he said in a speech on the state House floor. “They are destroying a way of life that has been in Montana for years and years.”

Hale, who, according to his campaign website, runs a bar in Basin, says pubs are important gathering places in his rural Montana district — important gathering places that are only accessible by car.

“These taverns and bars in these smaller communities connect people together,” the first-term lawmaker said in a statement publicized by the Montana news blog The Lowdown.

“They are the center of the communities. I’ll guarantee you there’s only two ways to get there: Either you hitchhike, or you drive, and I promise you they’re not going to hitchhike.”

Current Montana regulations establish a five-year “look-back period” for drunken driving offenses. The new bill, which passed the state House 88-12, extends the cutoff to 10 years, giving authorities a greater ability to crack down on repeat offenders.

On his campaign site, Hale describes himself as a “fiscal conservative” who “would propose cuts in spending, taxes and most importantly, regulation.”

But drunken driving laws are one kind of regulation that Hale shouldn’t be looking to cut, according to the president of Mothers Against Drunk Driving.

“It’s crazy to make a statement like they are hurting small businesses,” MADD National President Laura Dean-Mooney told AOL News.

“He needs to do a little more fact checking before he makes statements like that and insults those who have lost loved ones to drunk driving.”

Dean-Mooney said laws that extend “look-back periods” are generally good ways to keep dangerous drivers off the road.

Hale could not be reached for further comment by AOL News deadline.

Let’s take a look at the “way of life” that Rep. Hale is so terrified of losing.

Cops no longer have the time to drive your drunken uncle home, which was the basic way small towns dealt with drunk drivers back in the day. They’ve got meth labs in trailer parks and diseased hookers at truck stops to worry about. Free cab service has been removed from their agendas many years ago. Whatever fond memories Rep. Hale has of puking in the back of a cop car are the stuff of misty memories.

And while I’m a big fan of beer, even I realize that traversing highways and byways like a pinball on acid isn’t actually the safest way to traverse America.

Whatever it is Hale actually wants will never see the light of day. Not even Montana is that out of touch with reality. Well, not the paved parts with electricity and indoor plumbing anyways.

Until Charlie Sheen becomes president with Hale as his VP, then all bets are off and this song will become the national anthem.

You may as well learn to sing along now because they’re not April’s Fools, they’re just fools.

Buckcherry – Too Drunk

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG AM 1280, every Thursday morning around 9:10!