That comment from Sarles is the most judgmental and obnoxious thing I've seen in this debate. You get the feeling that he would bring back prohibition if he could get away with it. Sometimes people like getting drunk--sometimes even too drunk to drive--and there's not a damn thing wrong with that.

by Dan Miller on Feb 18, 2011 1:06 pm • link • report

I can't see the entirety of Sarles quote because its blocked but I don't have to be drunk necessarily to be beyond the legal limit. Even if I have 4 or 5 beers on a full stomach I might not be stumbling drunk but I still wouldn't want to risk being pulled over.

by x on Feb 18, 2011 1:13 pm • link • report

It all depends what Sarles considers drunk. I assume he means drunk beyond control. Indeed, we don't want people misbehaving, puking and urinating in metro. I do not consider having a blood alcohol level >0.08% constitutes being drunk for any other purpose than driving. I don't think Sarles meant that.

by Jasper on Feb 18, 2011 1:52 pm • link • report

@Jasper and Dan Miller--

Good points. I agreed with Dan Miller at first. Who is he to say how drunk I should be?

But then I thought he probably meant to say people shouldn't be unruly, getting sick, or behaving unsafely on the Metro. Maybe he should have just said that.

by WRD on Feb 18, 2011 2:05 pm • link • report

In fairness to Sarles, I think he was kind of trying to make a joke (or something). Later on in the interview when a caller called him out on saying that, he backed off the statement a little and said people should not drive after they getting on the Metro drunk. This was not included in the video highlights of the show. I actually thought the worst thing he did was say maintenance is more difficult because we only have two tracks unlike other major systems, despite the fact that very few systems have more than two tracks.

by Steven Yates on Feb 18, 2011 2:10 pm • link • report

Here's the quote from later, starting at 36:00 on the audio stream:

"Danny" said:

I was a little disappointed at the short shrift given to the question of the public good of late night service. I do hope that people who are drunk will ride Metro instead of driving. I agree that peopleshould not be disruptuively drunk, but it is not metro's place to tell ppl they should not be drinking. DCs's restaurants and bars rely on people, particularly from out of town, to come into the city and enjoy themselves. I hope that Metro will advocate for continued late-night service as a responsible alternative to drunk driving.

Sarles:

Certainly I see the value of that, but I would also urge those who feel they have drunk more than would allow them to drive not to get off a train and drive from our station home.

I think he's mostly trying to be lighthearted (not that successfully, perhaps) so I'm not inclined to bust his chops over this, but the follow-up does seem to disregard all the people who didn't drive to Metro. We know Sarles grew up car-free, so it's not like he doesn't know this.

by David Alpert on Feb 18, 2011 2:14 pm • link • report

Wow, those Iraqis have some cajones. Those walls saved thousands of their citizens lives and helped stem the violence. To demand recompense for them now? If anything they didn't get put up fast enough to stop their own uniformed "professional" security members from raiding each others parts of the city with their government issued weapons and Iranian issued mortar shells.

You've got to be fucking kidding me.

by Andrew in DC on Feb 18, 2011 7:11 pm • link • report

Wow, those Iraqis have some cajones. Those walls saved thousands of their citizens lives and helped stem the violence. To demand recompense for them now? If anything they didn't get put up fast enough to stop their own uniformed "professional" security members from raiding each others parts of the city with their government issued weapons and Iranian issued mortar shells.

While this attitude is anything but uncommon, it's a bit juvenile. Are you really surprised that invading another country, leading to the deaths of hundreds of thousands, and imposing a decade-long occupation is going to engender some resentment?

We destabilized the country, and it's a bit egocentric to condemn them for being insufficiently grateful for our somewhat botched attempts at patching things back up.

by oboe on Feb 18, 2011 8:18 pm • link • report

@oboe

That's not the argument being made though. The argument being made is that the walls "hurt the economy" -- you know what hurt the economy? The fact that every other day there was a bomb in the market. The fact is that there was no economy to hinder by these walls. No one had jobs. No one had security. No one wanted to travel - even across the city. By summer 2006, the country of Iraq was shut. down.

I'm not saying we didn't fail in our jobs to provide security - we didn't bring nearly enough troops in, and Shinseki warned us about that. So for two years, we fucked around because we didn't have the bodies to do what the Iraqis needed us to do. You want to hear me rant about the shameful way the Americans approached things from '04 through summer '06 - I can do that. Happily.

Despite all that, when we went to restabilize the country - when we went to fix the disaster of a mess we'd made, those walls were essential. So to BITCH that the *walls* were a destabilizing, negative force is fucking asinine.

Juvenile? I spent the whole of '06 there. Did you? I spent '08 there, too -- And I saw the massive improvement in the situation. So don't lecture me about being juvenile when you don't know sweet fuckall about what actually happened on the ground.

by Andrew in DC on Feb 18, 2011 8:38 pm • link • report

In Virginia (part of the Metro service area), being intoxicated in public is a class 4 misdemeanor.

by David desJardins on Feb 18, 2011 10:56 pm • link • report

@Andrew

Don't mind the comment calling you a juvenile. It is the sort of ad hominem attack that is used all the time on GGW by posters and editors when you disagree with them.

I've never seen a site where the douchey phrase "cognitive dissonance" was used so much.

by TGEoA on Feb 19, 2011 8:29 am • link • report

TGEoA has a point: Please do not call other people juvenile.

However, TGEoA, you can point out a comment that's crossed the line without making many snotty overgeneralizations about other commenters and contributors. Since you started commenting it seems you have posted little beyond low-level ad hominem attacks yourslf against the people and organizations you don't like. If you're not interested in engaging in a conversation about issues versus just throwing around insults, please go elsewhere.

by David Alpert on Feb 19, 2011 10:39 am • link • report

@ Andrew in DC: The fact that you served your country does not mean that other people can not have a different opinion than yours. It is perhaps an uninformed opinion, and your experience may enlighten us. Please do enlighten us, surely your personal experience is worth more than the propaganda we get to read in the newspaper.

However, the argument: I've been there, and therefore I know better is bogus. Just like us, you only saw a tiny slice of what's going on there, perhaps a bigger tiny slice, but nevertheless, a tiny slice.

by Jasper on Feb 19, 2011 11:37 am • link • report

@Jasper: However, the argument: I've been there, and therefore I know better is bogus.

Andrew never made such an argument. What he did say is that you certainly can't dismiss his opinion as "juvenile" when he spent two years on the ground in Iraq. And he's right.

by David desJardins on Feb 19, 2011 12:24 pm • link • report

@ DaviddesJardins: Point taken.

by Jasper on Feb 19, 2011 3:05 pm • link • report