Chuck E. Cheese and Rolling Stone: victim and enabler
Victim of the month:
Chuck E. Cheese restaurants, despite billing themselves as a place “where a kid can be a kid,” for becoming popular among disorderly adults. Several of the restaurants, under pressure from locals, have stopped serving alcohol—which some city officials have “pinpointed as the main cause of the fighting.” Of course, we know it’s not the booze—it’s just a few of the people on the booze—but giving up the alcohol is probably a good idea. The non-alcoholics really won’t care, and the addicts, well, maybe they’ll abstain for an evening or take their kids elsewhere, so that Chuck E. Cheese will again become the safe environment for which it is known.
Enabler of the month:
Rolling Stone Magazine, which I favorably reviewed (“Review of the Month”) in last month’s issue, for failing to identify Britney Spears’ alcoholism even once in “Britney Returns,” in their December 11, 2008 issue. The article mentions the “erratic behavior that led to her losing custody” of her children, her seven tattoos, her two psychiatric hospitalizations in January 2008, her “personal ordeals,” and a statement by her parents, Jamie and Lynne, describing Britney as “an adult child in the throes of a mental-health crisis.” The only mention of alcohol or other-drug addiction in the entire piece is a reference to Lynne’s description in her recent memoir, Through the Storm, of Jamie’s alcoholism as leading to “knock-down, drag-out fights” during Britney’s childhood and his nights out drinking.