After blasting my Washington Post op-ed that criticized the practice of imprisoning parents who throw supervised parties for underage drinkers, and after one official “applauded” an eight year prison term for a Richmond couple convicted of same, Mothers Against Drunk Driving has decided to “withhold” judgment against a wealthy Michigan woman now facing charges of throwing a post-prom booze bash for her kid’s classmates.

While there do seem to be some cultural issues at play, here (the woman is German, where underage drinking isn’t such a big deal), this case seems like a home run for MADD. There was virtually no supervision whatsoever. Kids could come and go and drink as they please. Even I would have a hard time arguing with some kind of punishment, here (though I’d stop far short of prison time).

So why is MADD so reticent to condemn the woman? Alcohol researcher David Hanson has a theory:

The parent is Gisela Zetsche, wife of the president and CEO of the Chrysler Group. Chrysler Group’s DaimlerChrysler is a major “Platinum Sponsor” investor in MADD.

I get uppity when people accuse me of being on the take. So hopefully MADD will quickly explain why Mrs. Zetsche deserves consideration the Richmond couple doesn’t, and remove all suspicion.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 12th, 2005 at 9:45 am by Radley Balko and is filed under Alcohol, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.