The Political Issue
Vol. 4 Issue 2

Time to Crack Down!
by Bert Redgrave

     "All-right" they cried. And a group of government efficients slapped high fives or whatever was the equivalent (some were not too coordinated) as the news rolled in. The Tobacco companies had surrendered. We got them, they boasted, we got them all. No more, will people believe that putting a burning tube of tobacco and paper into their mouth and inhaling will not harm them . . . but what now? The whole idea had been to put the cost of hospital care for smokers and ex-smokers on the back of people who caused the problem, but now the fight was won. So, what to do with the huge task force of attorneys, investigators, secretaries, administrators and the like.
     "We need a new villain," one cried, and the search was on. Guns, how about guns, no, the Supreme Court had ruled that the manufacturer of guns was 'not responsible if the gun was used for other than its designed purpose.' And again the cry went out for a new villain.
     "How about?" came a quiet voice from the rear. "How about noise?"
     "What! Who said that and what do you mean? Speak up!"
     "Well," said a small, meek man in the tenth row, "my son plays his radio awfully loud, and sometimes I have trouble hearing and I know he can't always hear me."
     "That's it, that's it," they cried. And a new cause was born in the depths of the political cauldron.
     There is 1st noise, said one, the noise of the radio or instrument or the band, itself. We can sue the makers of radios and guitars and drums and . . . And the radio stations, cried another. Then there is Detroit, they put the radios in all their cars, and the Japanese, they make CD's and Walkman and Musak . . . Wow, think of all the people we can sue. . . Who will pay for hearing aids for all those someday adults with hearing loss. Little Johnny can not hear. Surely the government and Medicaid should not pay, we must go after these villains.
     "Wait! There is secondary noise too," cried another. "The parents who go mad or deaf from being in the same room with the noise makers. And the people next door in a dorm or in the apartment across the hall, and the people in the elevator and the taxi."
     "O God! I feel a legal orgasm coming on!" cried a congressional intern known for oral presentations.
     "But!"
     "But what," they cried.
     "Well, we make noise too. We license airports and airplanes to make noise, and we say how loud a car or truck can be, we tell Johnny that his model car or airplane can only be so many decibels, we give away the airwaves. . . how will it look to regulate and condemn at the same time?"
    "No problemo, my friend. We regulator cigarettes, taxed the, gave them to our soldiers in time of war and we still could condemn them with governmental innocence."
     "Ah," said another, "it is great to be the king."