It was Thanksgiving night and I was up late still working on the web site when from the night light behind me (the television) I hear Tom Snyder introduce "one of my favorite (whatever the accolades) Gary Busey" on the Late Late Show.

    Well, Busey is not the first guy that any of us have heard from who didn't find "The Lord" until just after they got caught with their hand in the cookie jar. There must be a course in law school where they teach lawyers how to present the "It's jail or Jesus" defense to their clients.

    That's Busey.

    Busey talked about how the drug overdose worked for him. How it helped him find "The Lord." How his life has turned around behind the higher power of Jesus.

    The subject somehow shifted to motorcycles and motorcycle helmets. When I say "somehow", it's not because I don't realize that the questions are at least prepared for Snyder, if not rehearsed, before the show. Somebody thought it was important to talk to Busey about his motorcycle crash, and about his turn around on mandatory helmet laws.

    It was even a bit obvious. Snyder had to ask twice. (He's pretty good at rephrasing a question when he doesn't get the answer he was prepared for the first time around.) Anyway, the second time was when Busey talked about "being outside of himself, looking down on himself" as he laid along side his motorcycle the day of the wreck.

    After sitting through some ten or fifteen minutes of listening to all the ways his finding "The Lord" had improved his life; he then went into his only point of admitted shame. Busey was ashamed that he had ever talked against helmets and helmet laws, and vowed to work to the end of promoting helmet laws in all fifty states (sounds like a lobbyist/whore looking for money to me).

    What a lousy end to an otherwise great day -- Gary Busey as the nightcap on Thanksgiving Day.

    The point of telling the story is in the hopes that when this particular drug-crazed whore shows up in your state talking about the importance of promoting mandatory helmet laws, that he is not invited as a welcome visitor to the local rights organization's meeting.

    Oh yeah, and to tell you that Tom Snyder and the Late Late Show (David Letterman, Producer) have an e-mail address, if any of you want to make your feelings about Busey known to them, click here. (To make your feelings known to us, click here. Or to read other comments, here.)

Here's the e-mail I sent:

To: latelateshow@cbs.com
From: quig@usff.com
Subject: Helmet laws don't suck?

    Tom,

    As a selective viewer of television overall, with your show being one of my regular choices, I have found myself in general agreement with your view of the world. In those areas where I may have taken exception to your opinion, you have generally shown yourself to be well founded in your thinking, so there was no real reason to comment. AND, even though I may not necessarily share your appreciation for some of your guests; who you choose to admire is also a personal choice for which you can hardly be held to my standards.

    But, (which usually means "now I'm going to tell you what I really think"), your choice of Gary Busey as your Thanksgiving nite re-run guest was (again, in my humble opinion) an absolute departure from the educated and informed foundation referred to above.

    My question for you is: "Was it your idea, your producer's idea, or Busey's manager's/agent's idea to ask his opinion on mandatory helmet laws?"

    Gary has done NOTHING in my lifetime that would earn him or his opinions any respect from me or any other rational thinking individual. Busey has lived in a drug-distorted reality up until the point where only a Jesus-distorted reality could save him from the jail term that his life has invited. As Cheech and Chong once wrote: "I was strung out on drugs. But then I found the Lord. Now I'm all strung out on the Lord."

    This is not a role-model for my kids. Nor is he an expert on motorcycle helmets. The fact that his smart-assed, show-off shit put his head against the ground does not make him an expert on the purported benefits of helmets. In fact, all his experience really tells us is that motorcycle helmets do not make a rider *smarter* -- "It's not what's on you head, but what's in it, that will save your life." (btw: Busey's love for helmets came shortly following the money . . . he was hired to be a spokesman for a helmet manufacturer. An opinion whore, whether the payment is cash or avoiding jail. Busey is an idiot!)

    If YOU have a personal opinion on the subject of mandatory helmet laws, I would like to know what it is. If you are in favor of such legislation, I would suspect that you are probably incompletely informed on the subject. Put another way: The statutes that required Rosa Parks to sit at the back of the bus were founded in "facts" no less baseless and biggoted than the arguments in favor of mandatory helmet laws for motorcyclists. (Helmet laws for bicyclists is probably founded in a "sky is falling" paranoya which is, except for the manner in which it "trains" our kids, at least entertaining to watch. I don't know about you, but I made it thorugh my entire childhood without ever even seeing a bicycle helmet -- but then my parent's generation knew, and taught me, that Chicken Little was just a fictional character.)

    BOTTOM LINE: At some point you have been used as a pawn by the anti-biker forces in this country -- whether it's the money grabbing insurance industry, or the power-grabbing bureaucracy. But a pawn none-the-less. With all your education, talent and experience, you should know better.

Shame on you.

Richard Quigley, Sr. Deputy Director
Helmet Law Defense League
http://usff.com/hldlhome.html

quig

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