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Benoit Denizet-Lewis in the New York Times Magazine this past January reported that "eleven national and international fraternities ... now require most of their chapter houses to be alcohol free, no matter what their university's policy is."
Drinking has drawbacks, no doubt. But people will keep doing it. Wouldn't it be sensible, rather than drawing up more rules, to follow the lead of European countries, where alcohol is a healthy and intrinsic part of day-to-day life, where teens drink wine at the dinner table, and aren't encouraged to see alcohol as an illicit thrill? In the meantime, the news just keeps getting worse. Even Jack Daniel's is caving. It was reported last fall that the Lynchburg, Tennessee, distillery's Old. No. 7 Black Label "now registers 80 proof, instead of 86." Et tu, Jack?
What the hell is going on here? When did this country get overrun by killjoys and prudes? Aren't folks allowed to have fun anymore? Will the day soon come when each American citizen is subject to random sobriety tests? When each household room is outfitted with a cigarette-smoke detector wired to the local police department? When bars and clubs institute two-drink maximums? Frank Kelly Rich, editor of Modern Drunkard magazine, an unabashed and gleefully provocative celebration of the lush life, wonders the same thing. "It's like this whole new age of nannyism," he says. "Everybody's trying to tell everybody else how to live. They're so concerned about their neighbor having too much fun that they stop remembering to have fun themselves."So he's fighting the good fight: the fight for our right to party. It's an imperative, he says. "We're gonna wake up and realize we've lost our civil liberties in regard to drinking. The drunks have got to start organizing. The time has come where we're gonna have to — or we're gonna to lose our right to drink."
Dave Attell, the portly, balding, sweaty stand-up comedian who's best known for prowling the inky night on Comedy Central's Insomniac, eternally clutching a drink and a smoke as he hangs in the debauched underbelly of America, has noticed the walls closing in too. Speaking by phone from LA, he lamented the vanilla-ization of more and more of his favorite late-night haunts. "It would be nice if there was a little balance," he said. "If we could smoke in a part of the bar again. I think it's only going to get worse, personally." So he's not taking any chances. "I'm stockpiling porn and cigarettes for the eventual end of it all. It'll be like money on the black market."
He's wise. We live in a country where "values voters" are suddenly calling the shots. Where our fundamentalist Christian president is an ex-drunk who's zealous in his piety and sobriety. Where liberals of a sanctimonious bent sniff condescendingly at the imperfections of others. But as the sinners of this world go about smoking and drinking, enjoying their vices while they still can, perhaps the health police will come to realize they're fighting a war they can't win. Consider the words, spoken nearly 2000 years ago, by the Roman historian Tacitus: "There will be vice as long as there are men." We'll keep indulging our bad habits. After all, it's a free country. For now.