Rambling Rhodes

My Nick Coleman Fix

I'll admit it, I was all excited to see a new Nick Coleman column up at the Star-Tribune, but then I read it and realized that it's just so incredibly stupid, illogical, petty and poorly written (even by Coleman's standards), that it just didn't seem fair to kick something into the dirt that was already dragged through the mud by the author himself.

But, I still needed a Nick Coleman fix, so I decided to fish a random story off the Star-Tribune Web page and give it the patented Nick Coleman treatment.

Smoking Ban Rollback Is A Tragedy For Us All
By Nick Coleman

Well, the Minnesota Association for the Promotion of Lung Cancer (MAPLC) got its way this week when Hennepin County commissioners shamefully voted to roll back aspects of its county-wide smoking ban.

That's right, about the only thing we Minnesotans had to be proud of has been yanked out from under us, like a kick to the teeth, like a puff of smoke in the face, like forcing someone to read my columns.

Okay, I just looked it up, and asked a couple of my colleagues, and it turns out there is no such organization called MAPLC. Well, there oughta be. In fact, I may just start MAPLC myself, just so I can complain about it.

Anyway, back to my point, whatever the heck THAT is. Oh, right, the smoking ban rollback. Like I was saying, this is a travesty. Those fat cat Hennepin County Commissioners went and passed a ridiculous amendment that will allow allows "so-called" traditional bars to apply for exemptions to the ban, exemptions that would be in place until 2007. This is obviously asinine, and I don't even know what asinine means! But it sounds like a swear word, so it should probably be banned. I like banning stuff. Where was I, again? Oh, yes, smoking ban rollback.

Well, I was just getting madder and madder, so I decided to go out and discover what a "traditional" bar was. Imagine my surprise when, in the first bar I went to, they were serving, if you can believe this. . . ALCOHOL!

Now, I'm no Constitutional scholar, but I think I know a thing or two, maybe three tops, about the Constitution, and if there's one thing I know, it's that alcohol is illegal in this country. The InterWeb even says so!

After one year from the ratification of this article the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the exportation thereof from the United States and all territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof for beverage purposes is hereby prohibited.

That seems pretty cut and dried to me!

I was just informed by my know-it-all colleague, James Lileks, that if I had read a little further I would have seen that the 18th amendment was repealed in 1933. Apparently, those turncoat fat cats on the Hennepin County board were members of Congress in 1933 or something.

Although I was admittedly crestfallen to learn that prohibition was repealed, I was still intent on reporting on this travesty of a smoking ban rollback, so I went straight back to that bar and ordered up a Shirley Temple and started bending some ears.

"I think it's great that people will have a choice of whether to smoke at bars again," said Tina McAfee, 26, who reeked of Jim Beam, cheap perfume, and who initially thought I had come into the bar looking for my son.

I imagine McAfee and her ilk won't be so rosy when they're hooked up to a respirator, coughing up bits of cancer-flecked lung tissue this time next year.

Because that's exactly what this smoking ban rollback is going to mean for Minnesota. Death, death and more death. And fat cats are going to get rich because they're going to find a way to make more potent tobacco out of human corpses.

I hate fat cats.

UPDATE: In addition to fixing the spelling error above, which was "poory written" (thank you very much flamingbanjo), I'd also like to point out that Mr. Cranky has almost certainly caught Nick Coleman in error.

Posted by Ryan at December 14, 2005 03:32 PM | TrackBack