This morning on Fox Sports Net’s First Team, Steve Czaban said the Cardinals should take the black patches off their uniforms because Josh Hancock had a blood alcohol level of .15 when he wrecked his car and died.

People have problems. People make mistakes. Sometimes we get lucky and don’t have to pay for them; sometimes we pay with our lives, as Hancock did. Why keep beating up a guy who already paid the ultimate penalty? What’s wrong with honoring the memory of your friend and teammate and his life as a whole, regardless of why he’s gone? Have we become so simpleminded that we can’t separate the sin from the sinner anymore, so everyone has to be an absolute hero or villain?

I hope not. Those patches are for Josh Hancock, not for drunk driving, and if people can’t separate the two things, they need to grow up a little. Hancock’s family and friends aren’t grieving any less because of how he died. Chances are they’re grieving more, now that he’s not only dead, but being called names.

My first thought was that we’ve become awfully callous, but that can’t be it, since we just had a week-long national cry because some old white shock-jock said mean things about some black college girls. It seems more that we’ve become obsessed with finding fault in every situation. (Except when people are clearly at fault and brag about it, as in the World Trade Center attacks; then we call it a tragedy.)

It’s awfully hypocritical, too, because anyone who likes to have a few beers or drinks now and then, as Czaban does, has driven drunk at least once. If you have a driver’s license and you aren’t a teetotaler, and you think you’ve never driven drunk, you’re lying to yourself. You don’t know your blood alcohol level, and you can hit the new .08 limit without feeling drunk, so don’t be so sure. If you’ve driven home feeling good from the bar or the 19th hole at the golf course, and you never got a DUI, you’re lucky, not superior to Josh Hancock.

We really need to get a grip on this Prohibition stuff, if it’s not already too late. I guess it’s illegal to smoke in your own hole-in-the-wall bar in Illinois anymore, or soon will be. I’ve never smoked in my life, and don’t like to be around it, but this is ridiculous. If millions of us are non-smokers and want smoke-free bars so much, wouldn’t you think a couple of us could open a smoke-free bar and instantly have the most popular and profitable bar in town? This isn’t about making life better for us, it’s about punishing them, and feeling good about ourselves for being better than them. Well, I’m not better than them, and I almost want to take up smoking in sympathy with the targets of the self-righteous. Besides, this will just mean more used butts around doorways than before. If you want to ban it, be honest enough to try that; otherwise let them smoke inside where at least they might use an ashtray.

I told myself I’m going to blog at least once every day this week, and see how that goes. I’ve got more positive topics lined up for the rest of the week, but this one was irking me this morning. Upward and onward from here!