Daily Briefs: Suburban Blight, the Phelpses, Smoking Ban Fatalities

April 4, 2008

Chris Packham,

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By CHRIS PACKHAM

God Hates SB 244: Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius signed a do-over bill restricting protests at funerals — for instance, demonstrations that reveal who “God hates.” The Pitch‘s Justin Kendall has done a great job covering the cartoony Phelps family for years while never once resorting to played-out Dave Barryisms regarding stories “which we are not making up.” The ability to make the Phelps family seem realistic has to put him in the running for an oversized novelty check from Ed McMahon’s Pulitzer Prize Patrol. Lord knows I couldn’t write about them without sounding like the ringside announcer at a WWE match. Because here’s the thing: We’ve reached a point, as a society, when we have to pass laws against Christians with bullhorns telling funeral attendees that God hates their dead family members. That sounds totally made-up.

Tent Cities of the Donnybrook Acres Subdivision: As mortgage delinquencies rise, many lenders are foreclosing on big suburban cracker boxes but subsequently refusing to take legal control of the properties to avoid paying taxes and maintenance costs. The result? Whole boarded-up subdivisions of eight-bedroom cracker-box McMansions. I don’t know what word the Germans use to describe the feeling of satisfaction and contentment derived from the knowledge that something isn’t your problem, so I’ll go ahead and call it shadenzeitgeistesgeschichte, which is the feeling I get when I contemplate the fact that I don’t have a mortgage. BONUS FOR DELINQUENT HOMEOWNERS: You may be able to squat in your own boarded-up house. Convenient!

The tobacco industry reminds you to drink responsibly: The Economist — which is kind of like Cat Fancy, only with free trade instead of cats — reports that smoking bans in America appear to have been followed by an increase in drunken driving and fatal alcohol-related accidents. Drunk smokers are driving farther to areas where indoor smoking is permitted. I know Kansas City smoking ban opponents might seize on the article to bolster their arguments, but honestly: Why are we all of a sudden worried about this particular demographic of potential fatalities? I can barely work up sympathy for all the actual dead people in the world, and The Economist wants me spending my hard-earned emotional capital on hypothetical ones.

I’m the nicest guy you’ll ever meet, with the possible exceptions of 1911 Nobel Peace Prize-winner Alfred Hermann Fried and also Henry Winkler. But with regard to the hypothetical citizens of Statisticsburg, I am fucking Make-believe Slobodan Milošević, and the conjectural streets of my pretend country run red with the nonexistent blood of the simulated people. Woe be unto him who is a mathematical abstraction. But I really like the living, empirically proven people I’m familiar with.