Candidates Case of Affluena Affects Us All

WASHINGTON -- Ethan Couch, meet Donald Trump, fellow Affluenza sufferer.

Couch is the Texas teenager who killed four people and injured nine others when he lost control of his -- or, should I say, his mommy and daddy's -- speeding pickup. Couch was 16. Three hours after the grisly crash, his blood alcohol level was three times the legal limit for an adult.

His lawyer and his expert witness psychologist -- or, should I say, the lawyer and the expert witness psychologist hired by his mommy and daddy -- argued that Couch should be spared imprisonment because his overprivileged upbringing had failed to teach him the difference between right and wrong. Mommy and Daddy had never set limits or imposed consequences on young Ethan.

Couch's infuriating defense -- it's not fair to punish me because I've never been punished before -- succeeded in winning him probation instead of the 20 years sought by prosecutors. Of course, Couch is back in the news because complying with the no-alcohol terms of probation was apparently too much for him; Mommy fled with him to Mexico rather than allow him to face punishment.

"He never learned that sometimes you don't get your way," testified the psychologist, G. Dick Miller. "The teen never learned to say that you're sorry if you hurt someone," Miller observed. "If you hurt someone you sent him money."

From his parents, "Ethan learned you should be able to do what you want to do when you want to do it," prompted his lawyer. "I think that was the message," Miller agreed. Ethan, he said, was taught, "We have the gold, we make the rules."

In one telling interchange in a videotaped deposition in a civil lawsuit, Ethan's father Fred was asked about his own stop for drunk driving: "Did you tell the arresting officer, 'I make more in a day than you make in a year?'"

Fred Couch, smirking: "Probably."

When the head of Ethan's private school confronted Fred Couch about allowing the boy to drive himself to school at the age of 13, he laughed her off and said he would buy the place.

"He was adamant that Ethan was going to drive to school," LeVonna Anderson told "D" Magazine. "He believed his son was better. His son was more talented. He was the golden boy."

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