Recently, Andrea McCarren, a reporter for WUSA, one of our local news channels, did a special report on underage drinking.For a time, she withdrew herself from future appearances on camera because of the ensuing threats.
Excerpt from the story:
...The episode began after McCarren’s Feb. 1 report about Town Square Market, a liquor store in Northwest Washington that allegedly sold alcohol to minors as young as 14. McCarren and WUSA news photographer Dave Satchell collected footage of teens carrying out 12-packs of beer. The news crew recorded statements, using hidden microphones, from the minors about how easy it was to buy booze at the store.Read the entire story HERE. McCarren's children were harassed to the point that their mother feared for their well being and, possibly, even her own.
The report drew e-mail and Facebook denunciations of McCarren from young people apparently angered that she had exposed an easy supply of illicit alcohol.
“Way to go! Not,” wrote one self-described college student in a profanity-laced posting. “You are now probably the MOST hated woman in the D.C. area. Yay you! What was the point really of doing that story? No one finds it interesting (well that’s obvious anyways because its channel 9 news), but you also just ruined weekends for all kids underage.”
[...]
“We’re surprised by the level and depth of the reaction by parents and students, and especially the students,” [WUSA news director] D’Ambrosi said. “Some of them felt it was a privilege [to drink], even though it’s illegal. They see it as a rite of passage and that we were somehow interfering with it.....”
While reporters in foreign locales are often harassed and sometimes injured or killed, local TV journalists rarely face a sustained bullying response to their stories, said Mike Cavender, executive director of the Radio Television Digital News Association, a Washington group that represents journalists. “I couldn’t say it never happened,” he said of McCarren’s experience. “I would say it’s unusual. It’s not one I’ve encountered” in 25 years in the news business....
The entitlement mentality gone wild.
Andrea McCarren has now returned to on-camera appearances covering stories about underage drinking. Please watch the following:
The latest development, and Andrea McCarren is on camera (dated February 20, 2012):
Perhaps even more disturbing than the teenagers' sense of entitlement is the similar sense of entitlement on the part of the parents, who don't want their own lives disrupted when the police call with information that their children are in trouble:
...The teenager had been sexually assaulted. Police called the homeowners.We shouldn't be surprised that today's children have a sense of entitlement if their parents have a similar attitude. But we should be dismayed at the resulting breakdown of American society.
"We called the parents, notified them of what happened and that we need them to come and take care of their child and they said, well we can't come, we're at a New Year's Eve party," said Cpl. Augustine.
They told police they could come in a few hours, when their party was over.
"They were upset with police that we were disturbing their New Year's Eve plans for that night," he said....
What a sad commentary on today's society.
ReplyDeleteA lost generation. And what will become of their children?
ReplyDeleteDoesn't bode well for our future, does it?
ReplyDeleteObama voters!
ReplyDeleteIrresponsible parents make for irresponsible children. Parenting isn't supposed to be easy. It requires a lot of hard work.
ReplyDeleteWell, I can't say if this shows entitlement, but I have an example from a conversation a few days ago (online) about how this is anything but surprising.
ReplyDeleteUnderage collage student: "I don't drink"
40 year old: *snickers*
Me: Huh?
Underage: (drinking is bad, when a cop pulled me over to see if I was drunk driving I nearly laughed it was so implausible)
Me: I got that, didn't get the older ones laugh.
40 year old: Oh, its just that all collage students are always drunk.
And mind you, she is a 'conservative christian' as well and a very nice person. (though note she isn't a parent, nor would ever allow a kid of hers do this.) And it is still considered the norm.
As for the article:
I can't again say that I'm surprised- but I am shocked at the level of these threats! Getting annoyed is one thing, death threats are quite another- internet based or not. These people are obviously afraid- only fear gives this level of reaction- so they know what they do is wrong, and yet they still do it. The children know they're parents will bail them out, the parents are too lazy to do anything. Again, they do what is convenient, and what is convenient is not dealing with this.
Though it begs for me two obvious questions: If you didn't want to be a parent, why did you have the kids, and who is the more immature here? I dunno, I think the kids can almost be excused: if they aren't taught that this is wrong, then of course they will act.
Well, somethings gotta change. When the kids that follow basic laws are considered odd and out of the norm (myself included), then that means the norm is law-breaking. No country can survive if its citizens don't obey- and while I hate to use a slippery slope argument: if this is outright ignored, then what else will people do if the law does not hinder them? Where is the line they will not cross?
-Wildstar
The divinely-appointed nemesis of all critics of Greco-Catholic pederasty and child molestation, Rick Santorum, will put a stop to this Satanic demiurge leading children to question the wisdom of 18 years being responsible enough to fight and kill and die in war, but yet still be three years shy of the federal requirements for their states' highway maintenance funding by which they are barred from imbibing the Devil's water.
ReplyDeleteBut first, President Santorum must tap his colleague Ron Paul for access to the Iranian SAVAK's intelligence files on how deeply Satan and the forces of Hell have penetrated and usurped the will of 232 million non-Catholic Americans, also known and doing business as the "Great Satan," in order to reverse this massive apostasy to the federal government that manifests itself everywhere, not just in 14 year olds swilling Budweiser in the safety of their friend's garage before they can even drive a car.
As President, Rick Santorum will reform the CIA into the Central Inquisition Agency, and get to the bottom of these Satanic incursions into our culture - including heavy metal rock and dubstep electronic music - culminating in the location of Hell itself for an invasion led by our military.
Rick Santorum will make sure your behavior, and that of your children, does not deviate one iota from Holy Federal mandates.
Death to libertarians!
The other day when the liquor store owner was busted, police stated that some being sold liquor there were 14 years old.
ReplyDeleteSo, the underage drinking problem isn't restricted to college students. Not by a long shot.
Wildstar,
ReplyDeleteThat parents couldn't be bothered to give up their own drinking party to come to the aid and comfort of their daughter who had been gang raped is astounding.
Many of the threats that Andrea McCarren received came from irate parents -- irate because of what, exactly?
Beamish,
ReplyDeleteleading children to question the wisdom of 18 years being responsible enough to fight and kill and die in war, but yet still be three years shy of [legally] imbibing the Devil's water
We've all heard that argument before, I think.
I won't go into any merits or lack of merits that the argument has.
I think that the stories that brought down so much ire onto Andrea McCarren were mostly or exclusively about underage drinking going in a younger age group than 18-21.
I'm surprised at the level of threats also, over underage drinking... What a sad state we are in.
ReplyDeleteDebbie
Right Truth
http://www.righttruth.typepad.com
http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/17893
ReplyDeleteI think the idea of drinking being something one must be "old enough to do" to be rather indefensible.
ReplyDeleteAnyone can drink to excess at any age, as blood alcohol content factors have absolutely nothing to do with the age of the drinker.
And age really has no bearing on maturity levels. We all know at least one "adult" aged person that is far less mature than most 5 year olds.
The responsible use of alcoholic beverages must be taught and acquired somewhere, otherwise those who decide to drink will invariably experiment until they find their tolerance level for it.
Underage drinking is merely the speakeasys of the Prohibition era in miniature. Drink where you can and as much as you can while you can, and stagger on back to your upright law-abiding citizen facades as best you can.
I just don't think the government is or ought to be "entitled" to regulate what can be consumed and who can consume it.
I guess my parents raised me so Uncle Sam wouldn't have to. I took an ass-whoopin' or three as a kid getting into the liquor cabinet at home. Finally, my parents stopped keeping alcohol in the house, not so much because I was drinking it all up, but because my friends and I were getting into it for a buzz (along with my brothers and their friends and so on).
I didn't have problems with alcohol until I went away to college, where drinking because second only to breathing (heh).
I stopped, completely, after waking up behind the wheel of my car, engine still running, not remembering driving home from a party. Skeered me straight.
I only drink occasionally now, maybe once or twice a year. I can't say I don't like it though - I like it TOO much. Which is why I largely abstain.
I don't know how to combat "underage" drinking. Nobody is "old enough" to have an excessive blood alcohol content.
"If you have to drink in order to be sociable, that's NOT social drinking."
ReplyDelete~ Courtesy of AA
Submitted by FreeThinke
IF you have to drink in order to feel like you're having fun, you're NOT having fun -- and you're probably a crashing bore too. Most drunks are.
~ FT
Beamish,
ReplyDeleteChoosing the legal drinking age as 21 is arbitrary and, as pointed out in the link you left, resulted from lobbying by Mothers Against Drunk Driving. I can make the case for or against that particular age as the line.
But it is the LAW that drinking under age 21 and selling alcohol to those under that age are crimes.
The point of this post is to point out the ensuing threats. Frankly, I find those ensuing threats more disturbing than the underage drinking itself.
Anyway, back in the day (about 1935, I think), my father learned a lesson about drinking and driving. He was of legal driving age. I should also mention that the accident occurred before the days of requiring drivers to have car insurance. Dad didn't have car insurance.
He got blitzed at a suburban bar, headed down the road, and crashed his brand new Hudson into an embankment. No personal injury and no other drivers involved. It took Dad ages to save up enough money to buy another car. Thus ended forever his drinking and driving.
FT,
ReplyDeleteThere really are very few things more irritating than being sober in a room filled with drunks. Even worse, being the designated driver of a car with one or more drunks in it.
I speak from personal experience -- as the sober one.
Has anyone heard of an organization called DAMM -- i.e. Drunks Against Mad Mothers?
ReplyDeleteFind me a chapter, and I'll help support it.
Activists of any stripe may -- or may not -- be well meaning, but almost invariably their machinations have a deleterious effect. "Prohibition" was a prime example.
"Age" has little to do with these things, and I despise arbitrariness. One size NEVER fits all -- NEVER. It's a stupid concept.
There are plenty of individuals who are mature enough to take on adult responsibility at 15 -- and many more 40 and older who never grew up, and probably never will.
We forget too easily that in the nineteenth century and earlier girls were considered "marriageable" as soon as they began menstruating., and were often married at fifteen and the mother of two or three children by age twenty.
Now we see adolescence prolonged past middle age.
"There's nothing either right or wrong, but THINKING makes it so."
~ Shakespeare
There is no such thing as "normal." It's an imaginary social construct and subject always to change.
~ FreeThinke
"There really are very few things more irritating than being sober in a room filled with drunks."
ReplyDeleteAMEN to that, AOW!
AMEN!
Of course being in a room filled with AA members who insist you need a 12-Step Program, even if you're a teetotaler, is a close second.
I've been there and done both.
~ FT
Amen, FT!
ReplyDeleteI love the DAMM joke :)
"....and they said, well we can't come, we're at a New Year's Eve party," said Cpl. Augustine."
ReplyDeleteIt's just unbelievable, but unfortunately i'm not surprised, we live in times where people are really self-absorbed and everything is about themselves, not even their children come before them.