Roadside America / It Came from the Swamp
Barth, Jack & Kirby, Doug & Smith, Ken & Wilkin, Mike & Trausch, Susan
ROADSIDE AMERICA Jack Barth, Doug Kirby, Ken Smith, and Mike Wilkins Simon and Schuster/$9.95 IT CAME FROM THE SWAMP: YOUR FEDERAL GOVERNMENT AT WORK Susan 'Ii-ausch/Houghton...
...People will drink and smoke whether it is advertised or not...
...She also believes This Town is a wacky, crazy, nutty place that "doesn't work," even though, ironically, it's supposed to, for, indeed, our federal government is here...
...Somebody with beaucoup piasters is trying to divert your attention away from those footprints," the authors charge...
...A real device, invented by Nixon, with blinking lights and an antenna...
...The alternative to bad was always good—never worse...
...PL P.O...
...Overeating, drinking, or becoming a zealot are obvious possibilities...
...Trausch is also good on Washington fringe characters, the silliness of Washingtonians believing they suffer more in the summer than anyone else, Riggs Bank ads ("The most important bank in the most important city in the world"), and power telephone etiquette...
...Can our society reform itself by imposing fiscal restraints on government's power to tax, and, by inference, on its power to spend monies for governmental purposes, including transfers to those per-sons and groups who do not pay taxes but who hold rights to the franchise...
...In contrast to a certain famed humorist, initials A. B., who never does anything but read the paper...
...Some are quite sensible...
...Performing animals, celebrity tributes, Santa's Villages, reptile farms, gator shows, religious attractions, Elvis, foreign theme parks (the book has a map of "completed" and "failed" pyramids), dozens of World's Largests and awful/great souvenirs like the Three Mile Island Cooling Tower Coffee Mug and a Conga Playing Nun...
...Still, so are many other taxes...
...The most remarkable and glorious benefit of free governments, industrial revolutions, capitalist surplus, collective bargaining, and progress is the vacation...
...Bad bureaucracy," R.A...
...It never occurred to her that I would spend the money in some other—possibly worse—way...
...Airlines, for similar reasons, will separate smokers from non-smokers, as railroads have always done...
...Still, occasionally interesting data are presented...
...But there's so much more...
...All of America's world-famous tourist traps are here: Wall Drug in South Dakota, Rock City in Georgia, South of the Border on 1-95 in South Carolina, Graceland, Forest Lawn Cemetery, the Oregon Vortex...
...And why are these not listed...
...Welcome to Lewis Carroll country...
...A parody of the power-personality pro-files that appear in the Washington The major achievement of this book is to make an intriguing subject altogether boring...
...The Roadside America team embarrassed me by finding, less than fifty miles from my hometown, a 160-acre "living canvas" wheatfield shaped like Will Rogers's head, with different grains used for shading...
...A guy named Murphy, the inventor of the law that bears his name, came along and his descendants have made their home in Washington ever since...
...cloth $30.00/paper $14.95 John Baden and Richard L. Stroup, Editors Bureaucracy vs...
...They are all on the side of smoking, though...
...Should smokers be made to pay, through taxes, for the extra hospitalization cost they cause—which is usually borne by the taxpayers...
...Yes, but usually funny, and I don't think it will damage the commonweal...
...and the same unfunny elderly-andforeigner-bashing National Lampoon has been doing for years: "Dangerous, unsafe jets carry you to fetid, foreign lands...
...They'll fix you up good with their execrable food and poison water...
...Humor "thinkpieces" sap my will to go on, and I'm still weak from the recent spate of over-analysis brought on by publication of Saturday Night...
...She has a 46 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR OCTOBER 1986 chapter about the evolution and use of a device called "the power meter...
...It might be better if you reached for a cigarette next time you are tempted by sex...
...The contributions themselves vary...
...her children...
...How about drinkers...
...The Tupperware Museum...
...The book would have gained if both sides of the controversy had been represented...
...I agree with these intrepid young smartasses...
...The idea was that Letterman's "minimalist irony" is symptomatic of young people's (alleged) detachment from the political process...
...However, under normal circumstances, smoking is no more than a nuisance for the non-smoker...
...But anyone should be allowed to smoke, however bad it is for him, as long as he does not harm non-consenting bystanders...
...Overeaters...
...There, R.A...
...The lead is: "Smithfield DeWitt is waiting...
...In most private occasions and places, accommodations can be made to satisJames M. Buchanan and Robert B. Tollison, Editors The Theory of Public Choice II "The challenge of the 1980s lies in constitutional reform...
...No wonder, since "the assistance and sup-port of representatives of a number of tobacco companies" is acknowledged...
...People, including the government, may campaign against smoking if they think it is bad, or if they don't like it...
...College students are Letterman's staunchest fans, and two of the four young men who collaborated on this book are re-cent graduates from an undergrad humor magazine called Tacky World...
...We must develop, or regain, the same tolerance for smoking as we have for driving, drinking (not the combination), and cosmetics...
...Toilet Rock...
...Stupid...
...The Roadside Four advance the Pee Wee theme that American schlock is wonderful precisely because it's so American...
...The contributors to this study maintain that both the environment and the economy have suffered from those years of bureaucratic management...
...Box 1104 Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR OCTOBER 1986 47...
...Sorry, I'm using humorous hyper-bole, Trausch's favorite device...
...They examine the regulation of coal, water, timber, natural gas, and grazing land, and outline a new policy which would force bureaucratic agencies to meet standards of economic efficiency which would satisfy environmentalists, taxpayers, and business interests...
...It would keep bureaucrats busy, though not necessarily out of mischief...
...What appears to be blatantly stupid when viewed by a single person becomes politically viable when viewed by Congress...
...Smoking has not been shown so to harm...
...On the up side, there isn't any serious discussion of "what it all means...
...Meaning a Tacky World vacation...
...The revenue now got by taxing tobacco could readily be got by taxing some-thing else...
...Employers should be allowed to negotiate with their employees about on-the-job smoking, just as they negotiate about wages and other working conditions...
...The Mecca of Albino Squirrels...
...Wherein does "support" differ from "assistance...
...If anyone comes across a staler humor conceit, please pour two billion yards of concrete on it...
...You want to see those lions dressed in baggy pants and opening their jaws wide while some foolish trainer sticks a head or giant toothbrush inside...
...Some are outright silly...
...Please, no...
...And she simply fumbles some ideas...
...The argument of the non-smoker—"you'd be so much better off if you stopped"--reminds me of my mother's argument against the minor vices of Ernest van den Haag is the John M Olin Professor of Jurisprudence and Public Policy at Fordham University...
...She writes: "I once waited for an elevator with a lawyer who stuck out his chin, slammed his right fist into his left hand, looked up at the ceiling, and said, `I'm really starting to track at the firm.' " Not hilarious, but it rings true...
...Others ponderously state the obvious...
...Perhaps some Rolling Stone boilerplate about the collective humor subconsciousness of the TV generation...
...We have to accept many of each other's minor peculiarities as long as they cannot be shown to harm third persons...
...but even the interesting essays, such as those of Peter Berger and James Buchanan, do not tell much that is original or profound...
...She always figured out that, if I saved the daily expenditure on cigarettes or whatever, I would be a millionaire in no time...
...Further, in a free society, one should be allowed to persuade people to do what others think is bad for them, be that smoking, voting for Democrats, or jogging...
...The acknowledgement, however, is coy and furtive...
...That's the way to make a profit...
...The Creation Evidences Museum...
...Today, New Harmony has "a Philip Johnson church and a Richard Meier visitor center," but the footprints are downplayed...
...laments, "has brought more than one priceless roadside wonder to an ignominious end...
...The Lutheran backyard Gabriel landed in is closed, and "there are no currentpostcards of the miracle in the town's artsy craftsy notions shoppes...
...I once considered myself quite the expert on highway attractions, especially ones in Kansas, but I'm no match for four guys with a Simon and Schuster travel budget...
...Yet any restaurant will find it in its best interest to prohibit or permit smoking, or to separate smokers from non-smokers, whichever serves its customers best...
...I mean, we are talking strange down here...
...Hauling in Susan Sontag, Lionel Trilling, Revolutionary Road, and "Leave It To Beaver" for ballast, the author concluded: "These days, irony seems to be a way of conditioning ourselves to accept the gap between our ideals and deeds...
...But when Lady Bird Johnson was our President—Lyndon only did what she told him to—she decided to `beautify' our highways...
...As for public buildings, smoking is not a serious issue since most of them are airy enough...
...We cannot prohibit everything that annoys anyone...
...Surely the owner knows best what his customers want...
...Speculation about smirking Yuppie apaths staying home on election day to watch Dave on the VCR...
...The authors logged 21,000 miles on the road, and this exhaustive catalogue shows it...
...Tobacco advertising is a rather silly issue—the belief that advertising causes smoking is unwarranted...
...Beware all who enter this place for it shall ever after be a monument to absurdity" [an old Indian curse...
...Face it, no matter who you are or what you believe in, you don't want to see a bunch of fat, flea-bitten lions lying around while you're visiting an animal park...
...informs us, the Angel Gabriel once left a set of footprints...
...The only point of advertising is to advance one brand over another...
...And people who no longer buy tobacco, my mother to the contrary notwithstanding, would buy something else...
...Lum and Abner Village...
...Sex (let alone childbirth) is more hazardous still...
...As in: "Crossing the street at K and Nineteenth requires a lawyer and a ruling from the Department of Transportation" and a few million others like that...
...Cut down eleven of my brand-new billboards...
...Why of "representatives of a number of tobacco companies" and not of the companies themselves...
...Fanatics often are a greater nuisance than anything they are fanatic about...
...Environment The Environmental Costs of Bureaucratic Governance In an effort to safeguard America's natural resources from depletion by private interests, their regulation was entrusted to government agencies...
...Enemy #2 is the type of false civic pride evident in places like New Harmony, Indiana...
...The Soup Tureen Museum...
...But she clinks loudly when trying too hard to be satirical...
...Nevertheless, Trausch manages to beat some new life into this dead horse because she's a reporter with a good ear, and she has collected some good, funny anecdotes to fill out her theme-lets...
...If you've taken a long car trip in America since 1950, you're familiar with the subject matter: highway tourist schlock, those kitsch attractions, animals, and collectibles that the book calls "the economic mutants of social Darwinism...
...Post Style section and Washingtonian magazine starts out strong...
...What kind of "assistance...
...No less can be said for drinking (which far more increases the risks—let alone the nuisance—to non-drinkers), or for driving, or keeping pets...
...James Buchanan Using public choice theory based on economics, the authors discuss voting, tax policy, government regulation, redistribution of wealth, and international negotiation as they seek a new approach to government, one more responsive to and reflective of the individual...
...The World's Largest Ten Commandments...
...Similarly, the anti-smoker does not believe that the smoker might replace smoking with something worse and not, as he fondly hopes, with nothing, or something better...
...As the owner of Gatorama in Palmdale, Florida, puts it: "Used to be when I had billboards up and could advertise, business was better...
...Nothing frightens the good people of Washing-ton quite so much as the unauthorized chuckle...
...I suppose someone could render a useful social insight from Letterman's humor, with its hip sarcasm, adolescent nostalgia, and (especially with Dave's mutant spawn, Pee Wee Herman) fixation on the fun cultural junk of the fifAlex Heard is a writer living in Washington, DC ties and sixties, but is there really much to say...
...On the down side, there is too much Letterman zany talk ("It's time for the Giant Animal Parade...
...ROADSIDE AMERICA Jack Barth, Doug Kirby, Ken Smith, and Mike Wilkins Simon and Schuster/$9.95 IT CAME FROM THE SWAMP: YOUR FEDERAL GOVERNMENT AT WORK Susan 'Ii-ausch/Houghton Mifflin/$19.95 Alex Heard People who insist Washington is full of humorless policy nerds must have felt pretty smug last winter when the Washington Monthly ran an article explaining "Why David Letterman Is Bad for America...
...People smoke pot, which is not advertised...
...Lawrence Welk Village...
...But where it does become an issue, the local authority should be allowed to decide...
...Naturally, then, Public Enemy #1 is Lady Bird Johnson, who is depicted as a crazed "anti-tourist...
...So that's why I put down Strobe 1 ibott's Deadly Gambits the other night to waste time snickering at Leif Garrett in Skateboard . . . no commitment to ideological excellence...
...SMOKING AND SOCIETY: TOWARD A MORE BALANCED ASSESSMENT Edited by Robert Tollison/Lexington Books/$34.95 Ernest van den Haag Should we have government regulation of smoking...
...But a few grafs later Smithfield DeWitt is picking his nose...
...On the other hand, smoking seems to-tally contra-indicated in theaters, hospitals, schools, and wherever there are major fire hazards...
...The Boll Weevil Monument...
...I don't see the need for government intervention in any of these matters...
...Producing it need not employ fewer people than now are employed by the tobacco industry.fy everyone's interests, although, by definition, such accommodations will not satisfy zealots bound on saving the world from itself...
...They prefer "some-place that makes a chimp smoke a pipe and walk a tightrope" over, well, all of New England, any non-commercialized historical site, and animals in their natural habitat...
...cloth $15.00 The University of Michigan Press Dept...
...At least I think that's what It Came From The Swamp is saying...
...The Shuffleboard Hall of Fame...
...Better double-check that...
...But I am reviewing what was done, not what should have been done...
...And who wants the government to sit at his table...
...In this field, at least, America is still Number One...
...Boston Globe reporter Susan Trausch is convinced Washington is full of humorless policy nerds...
...Incidentally, the economists in this volume, who stress the revenue derived from taxes on tobacco and the employment the industry provides, suffer from an analogous misapprehension...
...Unfortunately, a new book called Roadside America may get the humor assayers excited again—its authors are state-of-the-art Sons of Dave...
...Yes, I thought so...
...Carbo's Smoky Mountain Police Museum (featuring "The World of Buford Pusser...
...If such dour people had been in power in my hometown, Gar-den City, Kansas, in the 1930s, the World's Largest Free Outdoor Concrete Municipal Swimming Pool would never have been built, and I'd be a poorer man for it...
...Yo, I need another two hundred thousand yards of 'crete...
...Although Hans J. Eysenck, in his compendious summary of the data, argues that there is no definitive proof (he makes a good case), I remain convinced that smoking increases the risk of disease to the smoker...
...The extra burden on smokers would certainly be unfair...
...People who refuse to do exercise...
Vol. 19 • October 1986 • No. 10
