Scratching The Itch

Elizabeth, New Jersey: December 22, 2003

Highway police who stopped a driver they believed was using his cell phone erred twice. First, he was just scratching his ear. Second, he was a politician.

Ronatarian Party founder Ron showed the two officers that the last call from his phone went out the night before. He had called his mother, he said, to "cut the apron strings once and for all." The duo huddled, then came back and fined him $50 anyway.

The charge: driving while "holding his ear with his right hand in a permanent fashion."

"Am I on f*cking candid camera? What the f*ck is going on here!?!"

Ron recalls saying, according to Thursday's edition of The New Jersey Spew newspaper.

The flap happened November 10 while Ron drove into Newark, New Jersey on a busy highway in the morning rush hour.

Ron filed a 10-page appeal that The New Jersey Spew praised as a work of tongue-in-cheek art.

The appeal says the fine failed to say which ear was being held, or even how many ears Ron has, and argues that New Jersey law does not bar scratching them while driving or oblige motorists to pull over to do it.

Ron wrote: "To presume that this unconscious act cannot be performed would lead us to the absurd situation of having to wait to stop the vehicle in a place that does not pose a danger for other occupants of the road in order to scratch, by which time, depending on how bad the itch is, I probably would have crashed before finding an adequate place to stop, or the itch would have gone away, reducing the pleasure I get from scratching."

Posted by Webmaster at December 22, 2003 10:28 PM