Back in the 70s, drunk driving was the sort of crime most people expected to be ignored as not worth enforcing, like speeding or copyright is today. There was a sense that everyone does it, and it doesn't really hurt anyone. In fact, the FDA even produced a short film about the benefits of being drunk in the event of an accident, as your body will be more relaxed.

But as always happens, someone went a little too far and ruined it for everyone, in this case killing a twelve year old girl. Like most children her age, Cari Lightner had a mother, and that mother was mad. So mad she forgot how to spell, naming her crusade MADD, for Mothers Against Drunk Drivers (later softened to Mothers Against Drunk Driving when the political correctness nazis got all "love the sinner, hate the sin" at her).

After a few years of whiny advertising and lobbying, MADD achieved its goal of eliminating all drunk driving related fatalities in the United States. But rather than disband, the group was taken over by neo-prohibitionists in a bloody coup which left founder Candy Lightner paralyzed and disillusioned.

The new, motherless MADD should probably let Word's spellchecker fix the 25 year old mistake and just call themselves Mothers Against Drinking, as their stated goal is to marginalize and ostracize anyone who consumes so much as a sip of alcohol. They're working towards this goal with misleading rhetoric, junk science and made up statistics, copying the model which worked so well for the anti-smoking zealots.

Most people have heard of MADD, but a lot of you probably haven't heard of its spiritual sister organization MADR (pronounced madder), Mothers Against Daughter Rape. Like MADD, MADR was started by the irate mothers of the victims of rape in South Africa, where it's estimated a woman or girl is raped every 26 seconds.

Rather than suffering in silence, MADR encourages mothers to speak out when their daughter is raped and shame the authorities into doing something about the problem. Where MADD had red ribbons, MADR is encouraging mothers to light a rape torch to raise awareness about the problem. The group says lighting a rape torch can also help speed up the grieving process, as it gives both the mother and daughter a feeling that they're doing something, rather than passively accepting their lot.

Who knows, if the rape torch becomes as ubiquitous as red ribbons used to be, ten years from now rape may be completely eliminated (outside of prison) like drunk driving was in the early nineties.

Today's comic was again drawn by guest artist Battle Dwarf, and is a continuation of Tuesday's comic. The saga will continue next week.

I'm not one for research. When Bruce Willis tells me to get the background information on Screechy Bill's alter-ego or learn some Japanese, I put some of Deacon's medication into his berry blast martini and slip out the back before he stabs himself in the heart. So when I ask why there isn't a Mother's Against Serial Killing (don't forget to love the sinner), bear in mind that if there were, I wouldn't know it. Seriously though, serial killing is at least as bad a habit as alcohol and tobacco. Even if it doesn't affect as many lives or cause as many deaths, the needs of the many should always outweigh those of the few. For that matter, why isn't there some kind of Serials Killers Anonymous meeting group and 12 (well, 13) step program to get these poor souls out of the playgrounds, gay bars, and wooded areas and into the classrooms? They might not be able to quit cold turkey but you can't expect to get blood from a stone when you're beating a dead horse. The point is that there needs to be a support group for victims on BOTH sides of the serial killing "unpleasantness".

Naturally I would be the perfect candidate to set up such a program, but it won't be easy. I'll need a lot of seed money (donation button upper left) to buy the appropriate number of plasma TVs. The logical thing would plainly be to bring together the killers with the bereaved families, or victims (if they managed to get away), that way the killers can see that their actions have a very real effect on other people. The program would be very beneficial to the victims as they would see that serials killers are just ordinary people who happen to have a bad habit that turned into an addiction. They will stop the neverending torrent of blame, and maybe even come away with a deeper understanding of their tormentor and his troubled upbringing.

I've had a lot of experience dealing with people who like to kill other people. Mostly I specialise in supervillains bent on global domination and ultimately destruction, but I can understand the mind of a serial killer just as well as the next guy.