The rotten apple, it seems, does not fall far from the rotten tree. David Boies III is a lawyer who, to throw another metaphor into the invective, has crawled out from under some stone in Virginia to lead (USA Today reports) a pack of attorneys filing lawsuits against a number of drinks companies. Boies? A familiar name? Yup. David Boies III is the son of David Boies II, Gore’s old hack.
The claim itself? That Coors, Heineken and others have run advertisements targeted at ‘underage’ drinkers. Well, while it’s perfectly true that some of their commercials may indeed happen to play well with the younger crowd, that’s because their appeal is, you know, pretty broad. Lip quivering with maidenly indignation, Boies III (or one of his flunkeys) whines that “in one (Bacardi) ad, a scantily clad young woman is standing on a bar stool pouring a shot of rum down the front of her chest while a young man licks the rum off her exposed midriff.” Well, I can’t speak for 19-year-olds, Boies old chap, but that’s a not entirely unattractive image to some older folk too.
In its greed, its cant and its worthlessness, Boies III’s lawsuit is perfect for our times. Doubtless, it has a shot.
It’s also worth noting that one thing, apart from Boies III’s shamelessness, that has made such litigation possible was the idiotic increase in the nationwide drinking age to 21. This, of course, was a Reagan-era aberration forced through by his useless transportation secretary, one Elizabeth Dole, a woman astonishing only in her mediocrity, who is now, quite incredibly, a Senator.