Alcoholics Accountable

The Romans had a rather clever adage, “in vino, veritas,” which in English loses its alliterative edge as, “in wine, there is truth.” Nevertheless, it remains particularly current in our increasingly warped cultural arena.

Amid allegations that he solicited sex with teenage boys on the Internet—with plenty of lecherous and poorly punctuated e-mails to corroborate—Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.) resigned two weeks ago and checked himself into rehab, claiming to suffer from alcoholism.

Even if true, it was a desperate ploy, and one that garnered him little sympathy. But Foley was not the first disgraced public figure this year to resort to alcoholism as an excuse for bad behavior.

In July, actor-director Mel Gibson was pulled over for drunk driving, but really shot himself in the foot when he decided to launch into a frothing anti-Semitic tirade. A dubiously contrite Gibson later explained that, in a state of drunken fury, he had said things he did not believe to be true and which he found “despicable.” There was already some evidence of Gibson’s anti-Semitism, from his equivocations about the Holocaust to his pornographically violent film, “The Passion of the Christ,” which depicts Jews as malignant, hook-nosed Christ-killers.

As most of us have come to realize, though, the “I was drunk” defense is bogus, not only for inebriated frat boys, but also for Foley and Gibson.

At the risk of sounding like one of those smugly insipid moralists who extrapolate from isolated incidents a widespread societal malaise, these two cases signify a worrying trend of moral abdication. The alcoholism excuse is a way of denying human agency, of viewing sin not as a choice, but as a pathology.

Not to trivialize alcoholism, of course, which is a dire addiction with physiological origins. But the crux of the problem is the relentless propaganda campaigns that would have us believe that because alcoholism is a disease, alcoholics are sick, moral cripples. It is the denial of agency that is so offensive.

This reeks of Christian masochism at its worst. “I am an alcoholic” is the equivalent of “I am a sinner”—essentially portraying alcoholics as wretched, helpless, fallen creatures in need of the redeeming grace and guidance of a higher power.

Indeed, a main popularizer of the word “alcoholism”—and the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous—Bill Wilson, believed that alcoholics should be healed by what he called the “Great Physician.” In effect, Jesus Christ.

With all this self-abasement and petition to a higher power (be it science or God), it is no wonder that Foley and Gibson thought they could exculpate themselves by appealing to the Christian dogma of human weakness. The irony is that in trying to rationalize their indiscretions, they deny themselves the right to any form of dignity.



David L. Golding ’08, a Crimson editorial comper, is an English and American literature and language concentrator in Dunster House.