Because if the Bears have any accountability as a Chicago institution, any interest in operating a law-abiding and responsible organization amid their comfortable Lake Forest existence, they’ll immediately end their hopeless, tragicomic association with a 24/7 migraine headache. Only a month after he was charged with boating while intoxicating and resisting arrest, which came only weeks after he was busted for driving 77 mph in an Edens Expy. construction zone, Benson showed remarkable stupidity even for him. He returned to the scene of his party-boat arrest -- honky-tonking Austin, Texas -- and consumed at least two or three drinks during a late dinner, leading to yet another arrest on drunk-driving charges.
How does someone with a functioning brain and a pending alcohol case put any amount of alcohol in his body ... and drive? Worse, how does he do so in a renowned party town with police on every corner, steering his BMW at 3:15 a.m. in the city’s entertainment district weeks after accusing the local authorities of roughing him up? You don’t think those Austin coppers were licking their chops as if served a plate of chicken-fried steak? Given Benson’s troubled history, it’s hard to believe anything he or his attorney say in his defense anymore. “He was not intoxicated but had a small amount to drink with dinner,” said Benson’s attorney, Sam Bassett, who seems to think “two or three” drinks at a Japanese restaurant with his girlfriend doesn’t impair judgment behind a wheel.
With that misguided rationale, how can we take Bassett seriously when he attempts to explain why his party-boy client allegedly ripped through a red light? “He does not believe he ran a red light. He and his girlfriend state the light was just turning yellow when he entered the intersection,” Bassett wrote in an e-mail to the Sun-Times. Oh, so that makes it OK, then, running a yellow light with alcohol in his system at 3:15 a.m.?
