Every time the bleary-eyed Ol’ Bloviator drags back from vacation, it’s an open question as to whether he should actually return home via the Betty Ford Center or, as the old folks used to call them, some other “kill-or-cure” outfit. All too mindful of my own propensity, even at my advanced age, to indulge in a few too many brewskies—and maybe drink that last one a little too fast—when normal constraints are removed, I ran headlong into the ongoing discussion in the New York Times about whether the legal drinking age should be dropped to eighteen. Recalling my own thoroughly misspent youth, and freely admitting that, on more than one occasion (several of which I can actually recall), I have allowed what made Milwaukee famous to make a fool out of me, the only question I have for anyone--especially the hundred or so overpaid, muddle-headed college presidents who seem keen on the idea--who believes that binge drinking can be reduced by making it easier for eighteen-year-olds to purchase alcohol, is “Are You Drunk?”
Folks, I started teaching eighteen-year-olds thirty-seven years ago, and seven years before that I was one. In fact, I grew up on the South Carolina border, and thus I was a legal beer drinker in that state before I was even a high-school graduate in this one. With Pabst at $1.80 per six-pack and a friendly beer joint six miles away, planning my weekends wasn’t much of a challenge. In the course of exercising the boozing prerogatives that went with being an eighteen-year-old, not only did I regularly rub shoulders with sixteen-year-olds who didn’t seem to have any problem finding a way to enjoy the same prerogatives, but I discovered one commonality that anybody a year or two shy or beyond my age seemed to share: We weren’t in that beer joint to relax, socialize, or philosophize while we sipped sedately on a cool one. We were there to buy as much beer as we could afford and drink it as fast as we could, because getting snockered was the name of our game. It’s certainly true that I have seen a number of shifts over the years in an increasingly sophisticated young set’s styles and habits, but I am here to tell you fine, well-intentioned people that when it comes to drinkin’, not a damn thing has changed or even shown a sign of doing so since Blue Ribbon was thirty-cents a can and a “church-key” was a young man’s most critical accessory .
For the current generation of post-pubescents, as for my own, the object of drinking is still getting drunk, and making it easier and more convenient for them isn’t going to make them any safer or more sensible about it. I understand the logic that says heavy drinking in secret means drinking as much as you can as fast as you can, but. So far as I can see, being able to drink in public means pretty much the same thing. Somehow I doubt that all those thoroughly besotted kids we see in downtown Athens in the shank of any weekend (and some weekday) evening have crawled out their dorm rooms or dumpsters and staggered downtown just so they could be seen blowing chunks outside a popular bar. In fact, I would argue that having to do your imbibing in a place that’s inconvenient, uncomfortable, and just plain un-cool does indeed serve as a deterrent for some kids. I know when I was a student at UGA in the late 1960s and the drinking age in Georgia was 21, I found it too much hassle to drink on the sneak when I could go home and pursue my principal hobby on the up-and-up in the Palmetto State. Come to think of it, this may be the only reason I actually got a degree from this place.
In the ideal world, an eighteen-year-old drinking legally in a public establishment would be subject to peer or bartender pressure not to make a fool out himself or herself, but I invite anyone who sees this happen regularly among real-world collegians to come forward with your testimony. It may be true that it would be harder for sixteen-year-olds to pass themselves off as eighteen than for an eighteen-year-old to fake being twenty-one, but I honestly don’t think the pimple count drops off that much over that span. Besides, the simple fact that a law is difficult to enforce--and perhaps unprofitable to abide by--doesn’t make it a bad law. Trying to reduce alcohol abuse among young people by lowering the drinking age is akin to trying to fight fatness by raising the BMI standard for obesity, except instead of “another (hic) birrr pleesh!” the likely response to the latter will be “Twinkie-up, y’all!”
Just to show that the Ol’ Bloviator ain’t got a problem with criticism or dissent, I have elevated this comment on this post to prime time:
Name: Fuck You
Email Address: gotohell@fuckyou.com
URL:
Comments:
You're a fucking horrible writer (that first paragraph was nearly insurmountable for me) and your line of reasoning is even worse. "Hmmm, here's a personal anecdote I've embellished with some awkward, masturbatory verbosity. CONVINCED YET?"
You don't analyze any data or cite any other sources or statistics. There's absolutely nothing to back up any of your bullshit postulating; you don't even make reference to the most obvious source of data for consideration: other countries with a lower drinking age than ours (which are plentiful). In short: you should never write an editorial piece again.
How exactly did you get a degree in history? What would you make of someone who published material in your profession like this? What would history be like if researchers used personal anecdotes and opinions to propose new ideas and made no reference to any supporting evidence?
Dear Mr. or Ms. You (I prefer to be informal, but somehow getting on a first-name basis just didn’t seem appropriate here):
Anyone who takes to the time to compose a comment this contemplative and constructive deserves a response, and I will try to reply to as many of your points as I can:
You're a fucking horrible writer (that first paragraph was nearly insurmountable for me) [You are doubtless not alone in this impression and, believe me, that first paragraph was something like breach birth for me, too.] and your line of reasoning is even worse. "Hmmm, here's a personal anecdote I've embellished with some awkward, masturbatory verbosity. CONVINCED YET?" [ Awkward perhaps, and verbosity is my trademark, but mastubatory? Man, I am getting old if there was some self-gratification involved, and I missed it]
You don't analyze any data or cite any other sources or statistics. [Do you mean stuff like this, showing that after the feds pushed the states to raise their drinking ages to 21 back in 1984, traffic fatalities involving drivers ages 18 to 20 fell by 13%, or a study showing the risk of alcoholism to be 50 to 80% higher among women who began drinking at 17 as opposed to 20? Or maybe you meant this report that links teenage drinking to unplanned pregnancies and higher risks of premature births? ] There's absolutely nothing to back up any of your bullshit postulating; you don't even make reference to the most obvious source of data for consideration: other countries with a lower drinking age than ours (which are plentiful). [There’s no disputing that I’m a world-class BS’er, but I’d say thirty-seven years of seeing college freshman careen into mid-morning classes smelling as though thy had showered in Natural Light or Milwaukee’s Best might count for something. Ditto for the incident about three years back when one of my freshman students showed up sporting a gunshot wound acquired the previous evening after he and a friend who was still in high school helped close down a local drinking establishment and chose to walk all the way across town alone in the wee hours. As to data from with the rest of the world, until American kids are raised to appreciate the pleasure of moderate enjoyment of alcohol the way kids in Europe are, I don’t think comparisons tell us much. ] In short: you should never write an editorial piece again. [Here again, you are probably offering good advice, but, even sober, my record on taking good advice is not exactly stellar.]
How exactly did you get a degree in history? [I hung around till they got tired of me. Isn’t that how you got your degree?] What would you make of someone who published material in your profession like this? What would history be like if researchers used personal anecdotes and opinions to propose new ideas and made no reference to any supporting evidence? [Are you kidding? The piece under discussion is a model of objectivity and restraint compared what passes for history in some quarters these days]
PS. May I assume from the tenor of your post, that you probably don’t wish to be considered for the presidency of the Cobbloviate Fan Club or participate in our annual August Scratch ‘n Sniff camping trip to the Okefenokee Swamp?
