Honolulu Lite
LET me try to get this straight. If an art teacher in a public school painted a picture of Jesus and put it on his classroom wall, he'd probably be fired for violating the separation of church and state doctrine. But an artist is allowed to put an obscene painting of the Virgin Mary -- decorated with elephant poop -- on the wall of a state-funded museum in New York. Making a federal case
of everythingI guess that means that the state can't promote a particular religion but it's all right for the state to promote the vicious desecration of a particular religion. Doesn't it follow that if the government is promoting a religion when, say, a state legislator puts a Christian symbol on the door of his office, it also is promoting the detestation of a particular religion when it pays an artist to stick a crucifix in a jar of urine?
THE cross-in-the-urine is a true example of your taxes at work. The artist was actually given a federal grant to create his piece of art. The Virgin Mary-with-the-elephant-poop painting is causing a stink in New York City because it is part of an exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, which is supported in part with $7 million in taxes.
As long as taxes are spent on museums, this kind of silliness is going to erupt. Good art should provoke a response, but should the government be in the business of either promoting religion or the hatred of religion through art?
I don't get it.
Here's another conundrum. How can the federal government subsidize tobacco growers for decades and then turn around and sue cigarette manufacturers for smoking-related illnesses?
How many millions of dollars in tax breaks has the government doled out to tobacco-growing states over the years, effectively promoting the addiction of millions of cigarette smokers?
But that's what the Justice Department is doing. On the heels of a multibillion-dollar settlement between cigarette manufacturers and the states, the Feds are now trying to get in on the act. This is crazy. It's like a serial killer suing himself for killing his victims.
The federal government was a PARTICIPANT in promoting the manufacture, distribution and use of an addictive drug, nicotine. It both encouraged and profited from the enterprise. On the one hand, it received billions of dollars in taxes heaped on the tobacco growers. But it also kicked back some of that money to tobacco states in subsidies and research grants. If this were an organized crime racketeering case, the federal government would be considered one of the co-conspirators. Imagine the head of a Mafia family that oversaw the importation of heroin for decades suddenly suing his own distributors because of the bad health effects the drug had on customers!
I don't get it.
But I'll tell you this, the country's fast-food franchises ought to be shaking in their shake machines. Fast-food restaurants actually are fat pushers and fat kills.
Jack In The Box, for instance, just launched a new ad campaign staring the "Meaty Cheesy Boys," a group of "teen-age boy toys," to promote the Ultimate Cheeseburger. The Ultimate Cheeseburger is about the fattiest, most cholesterol-laden concoction known to man. It has 940 calories and 69 grams of fat.
Fat consumption is responsible for more health problems than tobacco ever was. If the federal tobacco suit succeeds, watch for the case of "USA vs. Meaty Cheesy Boys, Ronald McDonald, et al."
Charles Memminger, winner of
National Society of Newspaper Columnists
awards in 1994 and 1992, writes "Honolulu Lite"
Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
Write to him at the Honolulu Star-Bulletin,
P.O. Box 3080, Honolulu, 96802
or send E-mail to charley@nomayo.com or
71224.113@compuserve.com.
The Honolulu Lite online archive is at:
https://archives.starbulletin.com/lite