I’ve been listening to more sports radio recently, so I have been hearing more ads imploring people who are being charged with drunk driving [1] to enlist the help of a law firm that specializes in helping people in their situations. I have no general objection to advertisers formulating their pitch in a way that does not insult and repel the people whose money they are trying to attract. What would be the point? An ad is a tool.

On the other hand, the pitch I hear most is addressed to “good people who are facing DUII charges.” [2] I have to focus my mind to remember that there is a story behind “facing…charges.”

First, the people who are being addressed are “good people.” When I focus, I remember that the law firm would also, in a pinch, take the money of bad people. Or even of intermediate people who are neither notably good or bad. So “good people” isn’t a screen that would separate out all the “not good” people who might need legal representation. It serves, rather, as a signal that there will be no moralizing about whatever the potential client is alleged to have done. Or, as the devil in the film Needful Things, puts it when a man tearfully confesses to him that he has just murdered his wife, “Hey…these things happen.”

Second, there is no consideration of what the potential client has done. He has not, in the language chosen by the ad, endangered the lives of other drivers, of any passengers he may have had, or made his family, if any, insolvent. The situation the client faces is a legal one. A charge has been brought against him. [3] He needs help in avoiding or minimizing the likelihood that he will be convicted for the purported offense; or, if convicted, in minimizing the punishment he will face.

Something has happened. That is why there is an ad. It is not the violation of public safety or the endangerment of people’s lives. What has happened is that this good person is facing a DUII change, the merit of which is entirely unconsidered.

Again, I am not protesting the ad. This is a legal firm seeking clients in the most effective way they have found. It does feel odd to me when I hear it that what the person has done is being passed over and his character is being praised in advance.

Surely that is worth something.

[1] The British crime shows we watch refer to it as “drink driving.”
[2] DUII has been a meaningful abbreviation for so long that I couldn’t remember what the acronym stood for. Driving Under the Influence of Intoxicants.
[3] I say “him” with a clear conscience. I had to scroll through 80—100 pictures under [drunk driver, images] to find a picture of a woman as a perpetrator rather than as a victim.