April 29, 2008



When Life Gives You Idiots...

You could've filled Tiger Stadium (aka Comerica Park) with the tidal wave of idiot-ade in this little drama.

Start with one University of Michigan archeology professor, a little more versed in ancient culture than consumer culture, who takes his 7-year-old kid to the ball game.

He spots a sign: Mike's Lemonade, $7. Being a nice dad, he buys his kid a lemonade. Yeah, the price is kind of inflated, but it's the ball park, and he's probably focused on having a nice time with his kid.

Whoops, seems that's not just Mike's Lemonade, but Mike's Hard Lemonade, with a whopping 5% alcohol in it. Brian Dickerson tells the tale for the Freep:

If you watch much television, you've probably heard of a product called Mike's Hard Lemonade. And if you ask Christopher Ratte and his wife how they lost custody of their 7-year-old son, the short version is that nobody in the Ratte family watches much television. The way police and child protection workers figure it, Ratte should have known that what a Comerica Park vendor handed over when Ratte ordered a lemonade for his boy three Saturdays ago contained alcohol, and Ratte's ignorance justified placing young Leo in foster care until his dad got up to speed on the commercial beverage industry. ...It wasn't until the top of the ninth inning that a Comerica Park security guard noticed the bottle in young Leo's hand. "You know this is an alcoholic beverage?" the guard asked the professor. "You've got to be kidding," Ratte replied. He asked for the bottle, but the security guard snatched it before Ratte could examine the label. ...An hour later, Ratte was being interviewed by a Detroit police officer at Children's Hospital, where a physician at the Comerica Park clinic had dispatched Leo -- by ambulance! -- after a cursory exam. Leo betrayed no symptoms of inebriation. But the physician and a police officer from the Comerica substation suggested the ER visit after the boy admitted he was feeling a little nauseated. The Comerica cop estimated that Leo had drunk about 12 ounces of the hard lemonade, which is 5% alcohol. But an ER resident who drew Leo's blood less than 90 minutes after he and his father were escorted from their seats detected no trace of alcohol. "Completely normal appearing," the resident wrote in his report, "... he is cleared to go home." But it would be two days before the state of Michigan allowed Ratte's wife, U-M architecture professor Claire Zimmerman, to take their son home, and nearly a week before Ratte was permitted to move back into his own house. ...And so what had begun as an outing to the ballpark ended with Leo crying himself to sleep in front of a television inside the Child Protective Services building, and Ratte and his wife standing on the sidewalk outside, wondering when they'd see their little boy again.

And yes, the CPS nitwits actually put the kid in foster care. Meanwhile, there are probably hundreds of kids in Detroit, in foster care and out, direly in need of assistance.

My big wish? That there were a TV show to replicate the role of the town stocks in the Middle Ages, where "public servants" shown to have their heads planted halfway up their small intestine will not simply be rewarded with pay raises, pensions, and vacation time, but with the kind of reception they actually deserve.

P.S. I vote for Professor Ratte to pitch the first rotten tomato of the season.

Oh yeah, and about childhood alcohol consumption, I agree with addiction treatment specialist Stanton Peele who contends that the healthy approach is giving kids alcohol in moderation, and teaching them healthy habits. When alcohol's not forbidden, it's really not such a big deal. And I say that also from personal experience, as somebody who, as a kid, was offered "tastes" of whatever liqueur my dad was drinking, and wine on Jewish holidays.

Yep, Manishevitz, the Amarone of the suburban Detroit Jews. On that note, I do have to admit: It is possible that if my parents served better wine I'd now be a crack whore/blogger posting this piece via borrowed Wifi from my favorite gutter.

Meanwhile, let's just hope the statute of limitations has expired, as my dad's a little old to manage in DeHoCo (Detroit House of Corrections).

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