Fifteen-and-a-half years ago, when Lindsay Lohan was young, vibrant, and in the process of destroying her career, I took to the old Ethics Scoreboard to declare her explanation to the police who had arrested her for driving intoxicated and in possession of cocaine the “most brazen and manifestly ridiculous excuse ever.” The coke had been found in her pants pockets, so Lindsay claimed that they weren’t her pants, launching the TAMP (These Aren’t My Pants) standard for outrageous excuses.
In 2012, the drunken captain who piloted the Costa Concordia cruise ship onto the rocks claimed that he left the capsizing vessel before his passengers because the he “fell into a life boat.” That was close to TAMP, but not quite, I ruled on Ethics Alarms. But the same month, The Smoking Gun reported that in Wisconsin, police responding to a domestic abuse episode that left a Mrs. Michael West bleeding were told by Mr. West (no, not the esteemed Ethics Alarms contributor) that she had been beaten and nearly strangled to death by a ghost. Ethics Alarms ruled that West had taken the crown from Lindsey, who has done little to distinguish herself since.
Now there is a new champion. In Wales, Melissa Jenkins Johanson, 47, drove down a footpath thinking it was a road because she was drunk as a skunk. A man had phoned the police about her erratic driving shortly before her car crashed into a bus stop near a children’s play area. Here’s Melissa…
…and here is who she swore was driving her car…
That excuse is a winner. Not only is it more ridiculous than TAMP or the ghost excuse, it’s disloyal. Melissa Johanson is the new “All-Time Most Outrageous Excuse” Champion.
Lindsay (now nearing 40 and reduced to gigs like being a celebrity judge on the Australian edition of “The Masked Singer”) doesn’t live in the U.S. any more, so we will have to depend on some other desperate miscreant to bring the title back to the USA where it belongs. I have faith in American exceptionalism.
To be fair, I should mention that rescue dogs in the care of the Auckland Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in New Zealand have been taught to drive around an enclosed track in a specially outfitted car, though why, I can’t imagine. The dog behind the wheel above is one of those canines.
Ethics Alarms 
Are you saying the dog was trained to drive in Auckland but was cited for erratic driving in Wales?
Concerning outrageous excuses, the most frequently used is that of “being the victim of an accidental pregnancy” thus I have the right to kill the consequence of the “accident.”
The actual driving dogs link leads back to the drunk driving story.
Oops. Fixed.
That dog’s not wearing a seat belt! Lock him up.
As “Campbell Live” finished about 7 years ago, have the dogs since then retired from driving or have they graduated to driving on roads? And if they are now on the roads it looks like another thing I need to look out for when driving around Auckland.