{"id":2443610,"date":"2019-05-01T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-05-01T06:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/?p=305005"},"modified":"2019-05-01T10:16:22","modified_gmt":"2019-05-01T16:16:22","slug":"meredith-c-carroll-aspen-parents-behaving-badly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/local-news\/meredith-c-carroll-aspen-parents-behaving-badly\/","title":{"rendered":"Meredith C. Carroll: Aspen parents behaving badly"},"content":{"rendered":"
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When an adult drunkenly stumbles through a ritzy Manhattan neighborhood where kids play during summer mornings, it\u2019s called urban decay. When an adult drunkenly stumbles through a ritzy Aspen neighborhood where kids play during summer mornings, it\u2019s called Food & Wine.<\/p>\n

Among the sworn duties of parents is fielding the wide-ranging and uncomfortable questions posed by their children. Parents here, though, have an even more complicated row to hoe due to the inevitability and frequency in which they\u2019re forced to address such Aspen-specific topics as: the reason certain shops in town always smell like an ogre\u2019s antiperspirant; why X Games visitors are more likely than all other visitors to dart across the darkest and iciest parts of Highway 82; how the house next door on the left costs more than all 14 houses to the right combined; blowing four-figures at lunch for the principle purpose of getting sprayed with Veuve Clicquot and then skiing down, wet, afterward.<\/p>\n

The debauchery of some of Aspen\u2019s high rollers, visitors, guests, prominent faces, chosen leaders, folk heroes, serial narcissists, charming criminals, legendary losers, substance abusers, creative clowns, self-proclaimed influencers, gorgeous geniuses, bankrupt heirs, textbook sociopaths and sober savants is generally pardoned, their vacation and everyday life excesses, eccentricities and errors quickly and quietly woven into Aspen\u2019s long-running tale of depraved buffoonery.<\/p>\n

Except lately it\u2019s harder to explain away or gloss over the professional-level bacchanalia that has crept off the mountain, out of the core and closer to home.<\/p>\n

On the front page of both local newspapers last month were mug shots of former Aspen city councilman Derek Johnson and his wife, Kerri. The parents of three each face as many as 24 years in prison if convicted of the various felonies they were charged with after allegedly stealing more than $2 million from Aspen Skiing Co.<\/p>\n

Three of the four members of Aspen\u2019s Lipsey family also have been making front-page news. In January, Aspen High School senior Joseph Lipsey IV, 19, was slapped with two felony counts of vehicular assault, two counts of careless driving and one count of reckless driving after crashing his Tesla into Maroon Creek in November, seriously injuring two of his four AHS classmates in the car.<\/p>\n

Two weeks before those charges were filed, law enforcement officials say Snapchat videos and eyewitness accounts put a \u201cpile\u201d of cocaine and assorted drug paraphernalia at a party in the Lipsey\u2019s house near Aspen Highlands. Joseph and his parents, Shira, 44, and Joseph III, 56, plus another AHS student allegedly \u201cinhaled\u201d lines of the drug, all while an estimated 15 other teens were said to have been present in the home where alcohol and other drugs also were served. The three Lipseys now face a combined 41 felonies in the party case and are currently free after each posting $100,000 cash-only bonds.<\/p>\n

And while the cat\u2019s been away reading the Aspen newspapers, the mice have been playing \u2014 just not in Aspen. An anonymous social media account is said to have sprung up not long ago urging AHS students to maintain the town\u2019s hard-partying traditions. A few kids purportedly rose to the challenge, using fake IDs to rent an Airbnb downvalley for the purpose of holding a bash free from the glare of their parents and an increasingly on-it Aspen police force.<\/p>\n

Certainly high school shenanigans are neither new nor unique to Aspen. Parents who behave worse than their teens, though, seem more apt for a Hollywood college admissions scandal, or Florida. Yet here we are. If the allegations against them are true, the Johnsons aren\u2019t the first local family to try to play keep-up with the abundant assets of some of their friends and neighbors. And the Lipseys wouldn\u2019t be the only adults in midlife to be attracted to Aspen\u2019s scene instead of the scenery.<\/p>\n

Maybe the Aspen schools should consider a class navigating the stinging envy that can accompany the often-glaring financial and social inequities around town. Another worthwhile and even life-saving lesson would be to instruct kids specifically how to imbibe and partake safely in the same way that sex education \u2014 and not just abstinence-only \u2014 is an essential part of the curriculum. The difference between the generation or two that preceded this one is the current onslaught of more distorted messages and stronger drugs \u2014 and well-educated parents who know better yet are evidently still too tempted by the wrong choices to effectively guide their children toward the right ones.<\/p>\n

The town that has always been beloved as a celebration of the mountains is metamorphosing into an excuse to celebrate anything just because you happen to be in the mountains. It\u2019s not uncommon to fall prey to the false Aspen idea that extras are actually essentials; an extra ticket, extra seat at the table, extra party, extra boat, extra fancy house to crash in, extra weekend escape; just one more run or line. Aspen kids are clever although their developing brains simply aren\u2019t capable of adequately distinguishing between the messages they\u2019re being taught and the depraved examples they see before them \u2014 and read about regularly in the papers.<\/p>\n

Follow Meredith Carroll on Twitter @MCCarroll. More at MeredithCarroll.com.<\/p>\n

via:: The Aspen Times<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When an adult drunkenly stumbles through a ritzy Manhattan neighborhood where kids play during summer mornings, it\u2019s called urban decay. When an adult drunkenly stumbles through a ritzy Aspen neighborhood where kids play during summer mornings, it\u2019s called Food & Wine. Among the sworn duties of parents is fielding the wide-ranging and uncomfortable questions posed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2443610","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-17 13:32:53","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSPN The Valley's Quality Rock","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2443610","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2443610"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2443610\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2443610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2443610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2443610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}