A Spectator of Events

Well, it's time for the party of linkin'. Weekend impends. Tranquility beckons. The easy chair, the tall glass of something chilled, the feeling of utter relaxation: the perfect mood for a Jay Homnick column.

What did the old boy cover this week? Well, over at the Spectator he was bemoaning and bewailing the weird transmogrification of the '60s crowd into a bunch of killjoy spoilsports whose nouveau secular religion prohibits anything with a modicum of risk.

He used Al Gore's film as the foil. This new bit of cinema purportedly documents our sin against Ma Nature, bringing her to a slow boil with our excess. (Sad to have to criticise a movie directed by Elisabeth Shue's husband.) Well, we have moped enough about the mo-ped. It's his Democratic Party and he can cry if he wants to: count Jay out.

In his humor-in-events column over at Human Events, he chuckles at the chuckleheads of Right and Left who were all still gung-ho about collecting the phone tax, a relic of the Spanish-American war of 1898 that managed to function in three centuries. Finally, the courts tossed most of it out, saying it could only be applied to long-distance calls billed by the minute, which are becoming increasingly rare. So the government agreed to stop collecting it.

Although Jay does not go into that level of detail in the column, this is also a case of the arrogance of power. There has been no repeal, but because it has had its wings clipped, the Executive branch decides that it's just not worth the hassle. All in all, the workings of government, seen lately in a series of close-ups, have emerged as markedly unpretty.