I must confess that I found myself almost entirely bereft of ideas for my columns this week. My esteemed colleagues, Jay Robicheaux and Ethan Guagliardo took both the Bacchanalia of Mardi Gras and the issue of the preachers in Free Speech Alley, doing an admirable job in both cases. Therefore, I am left with a hodgepodge of untimely thoughts and brief updates to old columns.
First, I’d like to extend my thanks to Allen Richey and Jason Wesley for encouraging student participation at the Metro Council debate on whether to restrict the rights of adults aged 18-20 from enjoying the rights that their peers from 21 to 121 share in the great time- honored tradition of hanging out in bars. I further applaud the eight council members who voted against this noxious nanny state BS, and only wish that others take heart from their actions.
I wrote way back in the fabled fall semester on the dangers to our liberties from do-gooders whose seeming sole purpose in life is to restrict people from enjoying activities that are potentially harmful to themselves. I was wrong, however, in thinking that banning smoking in bars would be the new spearhead in those attempts, though I knock on wood when I think about what is to come.
Still, we are once again left with 18-20 year olds who are, when it comes to the ability to enjoy alcohol legally, second class citizens.
Frankly, I wish I was able to understand the logic that built the case for raising the drinking age to 21, but I am unable to read through the propaganda without a stiff drink myself, something that I have cut back on since completing the “Around the World” at the Chimes.
Therefore, I will simply leave off with the thought that November 2 those who are under 21, yet over 18, will be entrusted with electing the same chieftains who don’t trust them enough to drink responsibly. It simply boggles the mind.
Turning to issues somewhat more important than forcing freshmen to rely on bums to buy them beer outside the gas station, we still have the festering boil of Iraq. American deaths, thankfully, have slowed recently, with the amount of dead now reaching 550. We steadily are approaching the one year anniversary of our invasion of Iraq, something I will take stock of fully in a later column, and still we have found no weapons of mass destruction. It now seems that Iraq was never a threat to the United States, nor, given the quality of its military, its neighbors. Basically, all that Bush can claim he did was remove a rather odious dictator and free the Iraqi people to fight a gigantic ethno-religious civil war as soon as we pull out. Some legacy.
In other Iraq related news, Richard Perle, one of the key architects of the Iraq war, has resigned from the Defense Policy Board. Could this mean, as Pat Buchanan has written, that the neo-conservative moment is over? Truly one hopes so, or the only ones to profit will be arms merchants, Israel’s Likud party and undertakers.
Lastly, I see that the twin barometers of masculinity, Johnny Depp and Bill Murray are nominated in the Academy Awards’ Best Actor category. Granted, this column will have gone to press before the awards ceremony is broadcast, so I will not engage in any prognostication that will make me look more like a fool than I already do. I will say, however, that now having seen both films that I believe Murray to have given the better performance, if only because it seems more out of character than Depp acting like a pirate.
I’d like to close by wishing everyone a good two weeks of midterms, extend greetings to those who finally got out of the Orleans Parish jail, and confirm that, yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.