Domrzalski 　　A Deadly Blame Game 　　By Dennis Domrzalski 　　 　　 　　Maybe 41-year-old John Martinez of Los Alamos is just a vile racist and a sleazeball of a human being. Or maybe hes just a typical American, an example of what we have become with our "blame someone else" mentality. 　　 　　Martinezs story is almost too sickening to think about. 　　 　　Two Los Alamos women, Xuming Wu, 40, and Jing Xuan Shi, 36, were walking Jings six-month old boy Alfred Chen in his stroller on a Friday night when they were run down from behind by a drunken driver. The women died. The boy suffered a fractured skull and survived. 　　 　　When the cops arrested Martinez on drunken driving and vehicular homicide charges in connection with the deaths, he allegedly spewed verbal poison. The cops, he reportedly said, "should keep them Chinks out of the road." He also is said to have stated that the pedestrians should not have been in the road. 　　 　　Martinez, 41, will have his day in court. He has the right to let the jury decide whether the breathalyzer properly registered his blood alcohol level at .27 and .28, more than three times the legal limit. He has the right to keep jurors from knowing about his four previous DWI convictions. His lawyers will be allowed to argue that any racial slurs he uttered would unfairly prejudice the jurors and should be kept from them. The jurors, if the case goes to trial, will decide whether Martinez guzzled enough booze to get three people drunk, got into his car and ran down two women and an infant. 　　 　　Until then, well have the right to wonder what this case is about. Racism? The evils of booze? A legal system that is laughably easy on DWI? Or another sorry example of the sick, "blame someone else" mentality that has come to grip this nation? 　　 　　Imagine: A guy gets sloppy drunk, smashes a several thousand pound car into three people and then blames it on the fact that they were walking in the street and not because he was a boozy, stunningly irresponsible jerk. 　　 　　Many righteous people are already expressing horror at Martinezs racial slur and his willingness to blame someone else for his problems. Its wrong, they say. Theyre right. But what Martinez did happens a million times a day in this nation. 　　 　　Sit in traffic court anywhere and you get the idea that every cop in the nation is a liar. No one is ever responsible for the stop signs or red lights they ran, the speed limits they violated or the parking meters they didnt feed. No, the nation is plagued by broken speedometers, obscured stop signs and malfunctioning traffic lights. 　　 　　People spill hot coffee on themselves and then sue the place that sold them the coffee. Their burns are never the fault of their own clumsiness, carelessness or stupidity. 　　 　　Smokers wheeze and cough their way to the store for more smokes, then light up and wheeze and cough their way home. Later, after 20 years of deliberately putting tar into their lungs, they blame the fact that they cant breathe on cigarette manufacturers. 　　 　　Parents who spend 15 years refusing to read to their kids, failing to help them with their homework and neglecting to attend even a single parent/teacher conference rail against the school system and incompetent teachers when they discover their kids think a bricklayer is someone who has sex with blocks of compressed and baked concrete and clay. 　　 　　When a company goes on the skids, its never because the top executives lacked a viable long-term strategic vision, abused employees, had a product no one wanted or were more interested in sniffing used underwear than they were in running the company; its because the employees did something wrong. 　　 　　People have heart attacks not because they stuffed their faces with greasy burgers, mouth-watering ribs, giant pieces of bloody steak smothered in onions and slathered in tangy sauce, or three eggs over easy with bacon, sausage, ham and three pounds of cheese; its because the government failed to pass a law requiring everyone to eat grass clippings three times a day. 　　 　　Abusive drunks are divorced by their spouses not because the children trip over their empty bottles or because their breath nauseates the family, but because somebody else screwed up. 　　 　　Two women and a six-month-old boy are run over not because an irresponsible drunk got into a car and hit them, but because they had the gall to take a walk at night. 　　 　　It all leads to one question: Who the hell do we blame for this? 　　 　　 　　dennis@alibi.com

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