Randy Cassingham's Blog

Last week's story titled "Busted", about one of Time magazine's "best inventions of the year", brought a mixed reaction. The invention is a 40-cent cardboard cocktail coaster that, when you dribble your drink on it, alerts you if it detects either of two "date rape" drugs. The tagline was: "Next year: one for men that detects silicone."

The story brought a dozen or so responses, most of which were either suspicious of the tagline or outright hostile to it. As a representative response, I'll choose Lloyd-Ellen in Maryland: "I'm one of those readers who just reads, comments to myself, and more than occasionally shakes my head at the foibles of the human race that you report to us so well. Because I enjoy the column so much I hate for my first correspondence to be negative but I really must register my protest at your attempt to be funny with BUSTED in the last issue. Equating sexual assault with *false advertising* is really not funny, and it's demeaning to your women readers to suggest that date rape is something to laugh about. Next time, ask your wife first if the manner with which you've treated the subject is tasteful, okay?"

As it happens, my wife does read every column before anyone else -- she's the first wall of protection against typos, incomplete thoughts, and other writer gaffes. I indeed specifically pointed "Busted" out to her, and apparently she "got it" right off. I found it pretty surprising that the people who wrote didn't quite see it the same way I did. The point of the tagline is to demonstrate that women are worrying about rape, while men merely worry about fake boobs. We often hear men whine about that, and rarely hear women complain about such drugs. Thus the point of the tag is to show how trivial men's whines are in comparison to what women have to worry about. As I said, I'm quite surprised that a number of readers aren't grasping just how much I slammed men's often repeated -- and, in comparison, really pretty trivial -- concerns.

Meanwhile, a Premium subscriber who wishes to remain anonymous writes: "The coasters that supposedly detect date rape drugs are not very accurate. I work in a state forensics lab that has researched them. The way I understand it from the scientist who did the research, the levels that are typically used are far below the levels the coasters are designed to detect. [Thus] it is quite easy for them to give a false negative. Please do not supply my name or the agency -- these are the results of state research and I would probably need their permission to publicly associate the agency with the results."