IN YET another sign that the death of personal responsibility is at hand, a Nevada woman filed a lawsuit against the Coors Brewing Company last week, claiming that its promotion of "youth, sex and glamour" was at fault in her son's death two years ago. Jodie Pisco, whose son Ryan was killed in a traffic accident after drinking Coors Light at a party, has also accused her son's girlfriend and the girlfriend's mother of contributing to the accident by lending him the car that he drove into a light pole at a speed of 90 miles per hour.
It hardly needs to be said that, whatever the allure of Coors' promotions, Pisco's son made an independent decision to drink beer on the night in question, that he made a similar decision to drive his girlfriend's car and that he is therefore responsible for his own actions. But the worst part of Pisco's suit is her suggestion that a reasonable person could be so influenced by beer commercials that they ought to be absolved of responsibility for their drunken mistakes. In her suit, Pisco claims that Coors "targets the youth of America with false images of conquest, achievement and success," and that such images led her 19-year-old son to consume alcohol with tragic results. But, as any television viewer knows, Coors' marketing strategy is less concerned with the sale of success than the glorification of idiocy.
Rolled out during the 2002 football season, the latest Coors commercials are designed to position Coors Light as the beer for sophomoric twenty-somethings obsessed with festival, spectacle and large-breasted women. Perhaps the most famous of these commercials are "Wingman" and "Wing Dog," in which twenty-something men pursue large-breasted women with the assistance of friends human and canine and, of course, plenty of cold Coors Light. Also popular are spots featuring the blonde, buxom women whom Coors has christened "the twins," in an apparent attempt to establish them as a marketing icon on par with the Budweiser Clydesdales.
These commercials occupy the same cultural space as Maxim, "The Man Show" and Kid Rock, a world of perpetual adolescence whose defining characteristics are the elevation of male stupidity and the gleeful interaction of beautiful women with the stupidest of men. In an age of political correctness, diversity training and cultural sensitivity, male chauvinism has acquired a new kind of retro-chic that Coors has exploited with exceptional vigor.
But whatever the cultural roots of Coors' marketing strategy, it takes a bold parent to claim that such commercials were responsible for the death of a son. All advertisers present a fanciful image of their product, and so long as commercials contain no outright lies, it's up to consumers to separate truth from spin. Coors Light will not make ordinary men attractive to supermodels, but it may well impair their ability to drive safely. However appealing an advertising campaign may be, it is the responsibility of individuals to know the risks of their own behavior and to act accordingly.
At heart, lawsuits like Pisco's are depressing not because they seek to deflect blame from individuals who are obviously responsible for their own misfortune, but because they suggest that those individuals are the easy prey of silly enemies. If Pisco's son was so taken by Coors Light commercials that he cannot be held responsible for his actions while under their influence, then he must have had little ability to independently consider the costs and benefits of the Coors lifestyle. To the extent that we blame others for our own mistakes, we deny the ability of individuals to manage their own lives in a competent fashion.
It is, perhaps, unreasonable to expect that a mother will admit her son's responsibility in a drunk driving accident that led to his death. But in blaming everyone else for the crash, Pisco has posthumously stripped her son of any capacity for independent thinking and individual responsibility. Pisco might have presented her son as a reasonable person who made a bad decision, but in suing Coors, she has instead cast him as the helpless victim of mindless advertising, chasing Wingman, Wing Dog and the twins down a lonely road in a borrowed Dodge Neon.
Alec Solotorovsky can be reached at asolotorovsky@cavalierdaily.com.
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