Drinking up the double standards

In the aftermath of the death last week of 17-year-old Patrick Murphy in Barrington, Bob Kerr this week had an insightful observation about Americans and alcohol:

“Our kids drink because we drink,” Father Glover said.

But that’s not the only reason. Sure, if Mom and Dad are knocking down pre-dinner cocktails — or maintaining a steady alcohol diet in the comfort of their home — the kids are going to wonder about the attraction. The underage drinking in Barrington is not a new phenomenon. It has been going on for decades, and taking lives for decades, just as it has in a bunch of other places.

But there are things at work here that parents have nothing to do with and little control over. From the time a kid can sit in front of a TV, he or she is being set up to become a puking, falling down drunk.

The commercial message is as clear as a beach bunny’s smile: If you start to view the world by the fractured light spilling through the bottom of a beer bottle, then you are on your way to the party where you’ll be surrounded by six-pack abs and firm breasts and have sex and then more sex.

It is booze peddling done up like a tease. Two healthy women mud wrestle over beer and we are left with only one healthy response — “I’ll have whatever they’re having.”

It is the big difference between my time of early indulgence 45 years ago and now. There was always, it seems, the friend whose parents left for the weekend and left behind a well stocked fridge and liquor cabinet and the opportunity to get really sick with friends.

It’s gotten stranger and crazier in the last few decades. There’s pop culture conditioning going on. The message is aimed straight at raging teenage hormones — life gets better with every gulp. And, oh yeah, by the way, remember to drink responsibly.

I was reminded of the cultural influence of how young Americans are brought up with alcohol -- they're (unrealistically) not supposed to drink a drop, until they're (legally) free to guzzle away at 21, as Justin Wolff once wrote in the Phoenix:

Alcohol, we should admit to kids, plays a crucial role in social customs around the world. What's more, most adults enjoy drinking and many of them do so responsibly. In this country, there is no better way to breed trouble than to deny to a teenager the existence of something they can clearly see. The cynicism that so many of us feel in our late teens emerges with our discovery of hypocrisy, whether it be parental or governmental. Though our distaste for hypocrisy abates with age, we'd do well to recall its flavor now and then. At the very least, we shouldn't lock the facts of drinking in the cabinet beside the Smirnoff. In Europe, where the drinking age is between 16 and 18, and where parents drink more naturally in front of their children, kids don't have to learn to drink surreptitiously. As a result, they tend not to binge.