To be sung to the tune of "I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Out of My Hair."

In the 1880s and 1890s, the prohibitionists attacked drinking in part by going after drinkers' wallets: raising tavern license fees, raising brewer' taxes, etc.

Today's prohibs are still at it.

A thoughtful look at a Wisconsin attempt to control/reduce drinking by raising taxes is here at Amy Mittelman's blog. Amy wrote about the late 19th century relationship between the alcohol industry and federal tax policy in a terrific dissertation titled "The Politics of Alcohol Production." She's also the author of a book titled Brewing Battles.

And that reminded me of Jay Brooks's blog on the subject of beer and taxes a few days back. As always, he's got much to say on the subject, he being one of the staunchest defenders of our right to drink. To read Jay's piece, scroll down to the entry for April 11.

Thanks and a tip 'o the mug to David Fahey for alerting me to Amy's blog.

Posted by Maureen Ogle at 02:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This story broke yesterday in the Wall Street Journal. That's a for-pay site, so I can't send you there, but here's a free although shorter and skimpier version of this tale of dumbassness in action.

In brief: Wal-mart hires small company named Flagler Productions to videotape in-house functions: sales meetings, annual meetings, gatherings of company honchos, etc.

These are "unscripted" moments: male Wal-Mart execs dressed as women, singing and dancing on-stage to rally the company troops. Wal-Mart execs joking about unsafe gas cans sold at the stores. A Wal-Mart exec introducing Hillary Clinton as "one of us." (No doubt many of these tapes are already up and running at someplace like YouTube.)

There are lots of such meetings and Wal-Mart becomes Flagler's main source of revenue.

But in 2006, Wal-Mart dumps Flagler. No surprise, the production company, having lost its main customer, nearly goes under.

Until the owners realize something: Wal-Mart and Flagler never signed a contract stating the terms of their relationship.

So Flagler owns the tapes. They can do whatever they want with them.

Like sell copies to lawyers representing a family that is suing Wal-Mart for selling a particular kind of unsafe gas can. The same can that company execs made jokes about because it was, ya know, so unsafe.

All I gotta say is: This is truly THE dumbass move of the day, week, month. Hell, of the millenium.

Ooooooooohhhhhhhhh, man. I mean, I'm not a lawyer. Not even in the ballpark. But even I would know enough to (a) sign a contract if I entered into a business relationship; and (b) create a contract guaranteeing from now to eternity Wal-Mart's ownership of said tapes.

It'll be awhile before I find a dumbass move to top this one.

Well, okay. Maybe not. After all, there's a presidential campaign going on and George Bush is still in the White House.......

Meantime, Wal-Mart, I hereby offer my services as a contract reader. My fee? A mere one-tenth of what you paid the company honcho that hired Flagler. And I guarantee my work.

You know where to find me.

Posted by Maureen Ogle at 02:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Oh, man, this surely must be the dumbass move of the week -- if not the month, year, and decade.

Remember the James Frey fake memoir? How Oprah touted him until she figured out he'd concocted the whole story? (I'm not gonna dignify Frey with a link to anything.)

Here we go again, only this time the fakery is on an even grander scale.

A woman named Margaret B. Jones (except that's not her real name...) wrote a memoir about her life in the gang world of South LA. About growing up mixed race, in poverty, being a single mother, blah blah blah.

A publishing house bought this miracle of brilliant prose and pulse-racing narrative.

So the book landed in bookstores this week, and Ms. "Jones" (her real name is Margaret Seltzer) sat down for an interview with a reporter from the New York Times. The resulting piece ran on February 28.

It's a looong article detailing her former life as a foster child, as a drug-dealing gang member. The reporter (and the subject) wax rhapsodic about her new life in Oregon, living in a nice house, working as a writer, cooking black-eye peas for the friends who stop by. On and on.

Lies, all of it. Well, okay, she's living in Oregon. That part's right. The rest? One fabricated detail after another.

Now I ask you: What kind of a dumbass is this woman? She'd managed to hoodwink the publisher (and shame on her editor at the publishing house). But did she really think that her real family (an ordinary middle-class group from a tony suburb of LA) wouldn't figure it out?

I mean, there's her photograph plastered all over the place.

Did she think her own mother and siblings weren't going to recognize her?

I figure this woman is either the most arrogant creature on the planet - or the dumbass of the week. Maybe both.

Posted by Maureen Ogle at 03:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)