It was on their fourth album, \u201cI Think We\u2019re Also Bozos on This Bus,\u201d that the Firesign Theatre formulated Fudd\u2019s First Law of Opposition: \u201cIf you push something hard enough, it will fall over.\u201d <\/p>\n
(Trivia fans will also recall Testicle\u2019s Deviant to Fudd\u2019s First Law: \u201cWhat goes in, must come out.\u201d) <\/p>\n
Observers of meddling federal bureaucracies have started to notice a related tendency. To the \u201cfalling over\u201d part, that is. <\/p>\n
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission seemed irresistible in their insistence that no job category be reserved for members of a single gender: it appeared to be only a matter of time before there\u2019d be federal quotas for male Playboy centerfolds (March and September?) and a fixed percentage of women being slammed into the boards in the NHL. <\/p>\n
But then the EEOC took on Hooters, and — lo and behold — Hooters fought back. <\/p>\n
In Washington and New York, full-page newspaper ads showed a mustachioed stud decked out in skimpy shorts and T-shirt — and enormous falsies — announcing that, thanks to EEOC intervention, this was what your server was now going to look like at the restaurant chain known for its shapely waitresses: Introducing \u201cThe Hooters Boys!\u201d <\/p>\n
There\u2019s nothing a nit-picking nanny-stater hates more than being laughed at. The EEOC quickly backed down. <\/p>\n
This spring, it was the turn of Vaune Dillmann, micro-brewer in the tiny Northern California town of Weed, to face the ire of a regulatory agency with too much time on its hands. <\/p>\n
The dispute started last winter after Mr. Dillmann sent the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau Mt. Shasta Brewing Co.\u2019s proposed label for its latest beer, Lemurian Lager. <\/p>\n
He included the same bottle cap he\u2019d been using on his other five brews — a cap which makes a pun on the name of the small town for which his brewery has been a shot in the arm: \u201cTry Legal Weed.\u201d <\/p>\n
This time, though, the U.S. Treasury branch rejected the phrasing, citing federal laws that supposedly prohibit drug references on alcoholic beverages. <\/p>\n
(Since alcohol is unquestionably a drug, about the only way to avoid a \u201cdrug references\u201d on a beer bottle is to pretend it\u2019s sarsaparilla.) <\/p>\n
Since the dispute was first publicized in April, Mr. Dillmann said he has received letters, phone calls and messages from more than 1,200 people around the world \u00d1 including old friends and his high school football coach in his hometown of Milwaukee. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe have not had one even remotely negative comment,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
Mr. Dillmann founded his brewery in 2004 and named the company\u2019s first official brew for the town\u2019s founder, Abner Weed, a timber baron who eventually was elected to the state Senate. <\/p>\n
Mr. Dillmann appealed and was preparing for a legal fight when he received a registered letter this week saying he can continue using the bottle caps. <\/p>\n
\u201cBased on the context of the entire label, we agree that the phrase in question refers to the brand name of the product and does not mislead consumers,\u201d said the letter, dated July 31. <\/p>\n
In other words, the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau will back down and slink away, picking a fight with someone less likely to rear up and fight back, less likely to expose their inherent silliness and blatant lack of reason to exist. <\/p>\n
Congratulations, Mr. Dillmann. Yours is a heart-warming victory over the forces of pettifogging repression. In fact, we\u2019re all toked up about it. <\/p>\n
# # # <\/p>\n
In other California news, the state\u2019s highest court on Monday Aug. 18 said doctors have to perform elective procedures desired by gays and lesbians; they can\u2019t get out of the obligation based on their religious beliefs. <\/p>\n
Guadalupe Benitez was treated with fertility drugs for more than a year in hopes of eventually becoming pregnant through artificial insemination. But when the time came for that procedure, she says her two Christian doctors refused to go along because of her sexual orientation. <\/p>\n
Ms. Benitez, now raising a 6-year-old boy and 2-year-old twin girls with her longtime lesbian partner, Joanne Clark, successfully visited another practitioner to whom the two physicians referred her. But she sued them, anyway. <\/p>\n
After seven years, the case was finally heard by the California Supreme Court, which ruled unanimously Monday that the respondent doctors have neither a free speech right nor a religious exemption from the state\u2019s law, which \u201cimposes on business establishments certain antidiscrimination obligations.\u201d <\/p>\n
The California law was originally designed to prevent hotels, restaurants and other public facilities from refusing to serve patrons because of their race. Certainly no one would want a patient denied life-saving medical services because of race or sexual orientation. But when the law is expanded to cover the many procedures modern medicine can now contemplate, the court enters a Twilight Zone. <\/p>\n
Jennifer Pizer, Ms. Benitez\u2019s attorney, claims the ruling was \u201ca victory for public health.\u201d <\/p>\n
Really? <\/p>\n
What if a doctor declines to personally — and irreversibly — amputate a patient\u2019s sexual organs, rejecting the assertion that said patient believes he is \u201ca woman trapped in a man\u2019s body\u201d? In California, it now appears physicians have no right to refuse to perform such a procedure — no matter what their personal or religious reservations — short of giving up their profession entirely. <\/p>\n
Less than a century ago, it was considered good public policy in some states to sterilize the mentally retarded, without informed consent, in order to prevent the further procreation of imbeciles. Under this California ruling, would a doctor be allowed to decline to do that? <\/p>\n
In Germany in the 1930s and \u201940s, doctors did many things in the name of \u201cthe public health\u201d that their consciences should have barred. The Reich heartily approved. <\/p>\n
A legitimate \u201cright\u201d can\u2019t and doesn\u2019t impose an obligation or legal duty on others. Ethicists can debate whether the two doctors did the right thing. But California\u2019s high court has just ruled that medical doctors are nothing more than indentured servants on call for the state. Not only does that make them less free — allowing the state to tell a doctor that he must ignore his conscience is also highly dangerous. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It was on their fourth album, \u201cI Think We\u2019re Also Bozos on This Bus,\u201d that the Firesign Theatre formulated Fudd\u2019s First Law of Opposition: \u201cIf you push something hard enough, it will fall over.\u201d (Trivia fans will also recall Testicle\u2019s Deviant to Fudd\u2019s First Law: \u201cWhat goes in, must come out.\u201d) Observers of meddling federal […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-97","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-big-brother"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pWqFl-1z","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=97"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=97"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=97"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=97"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}