The Scolding Genie chides again

Tom Teepen/SANCTIMONY

Sure, there's something to be said for virtue. But instead of
secondguessing one another, wouldn't we do better to get cracking on
our common life?

Run for your life.

That thump, thump, thump you hear behind you is a holierthany'all
moralism chasing us down with lumberjack boots.

The latest galloping moralist is, implausibly, Bill Clinton, rejiggered
during the last election as Dr. Stern, scourge of wayward citizens and
national hair shirtinchief.

Thus the Clinton who was haranguing school children into uniforms.

The Clinton who tolled curfew.

And now the Clinton who wants to slap that drink out of your hand. It's
no longer ``Wake up, America!'' It's ``Straighten up, America!''

The purveyors of spirituous liquors have lately taken to advertising on
TV after years of voluntarily absenting themselves. Beer and wine, which
have advertised there all along, are elbowing whiskey out of the market,
so the whiskey folks, not surprisingly, have decided to quit taking a
dive.

This has outraged Clinton, though it is not clear just why. There's about
the same amount of alcohol in a glass of wine or a bottle of beer as in a
shot of whiskey. The delivery system would seem to be irrelevant.

Clinton is buying into one of those strange pairings that twist our social
politics.

First it was sex and violence, routinely twinned as if there were only a
trivial difference between committing hurt and committing pleasure.

Now it's tobacco and alcohol, arbitrarily but so often dragged into verbal
proximity that they are acquiring a parity in infamy their qualitative
differences can't justify.

Of course, the misuse of alcohol can be is a problem, but tobacco is
deadly in its customary use. Alcohol is not.

Even a president on a righteousness toot ought to get a clue from the
fact that medical studies suggest there may be health benefits for many
in a drink or two a day. It would be hard to find a doctor who suggests
smoking as a wellness regime.

The Scolding Genie is very much out of the bottle.

The cultural right is off on giddy flights of vicarious morality, from
Bill Bennett's virtuemongering to a nostalgia for Victorianism that in
some quarters is as titillating, if you pardon the word, as paperback
hunkamuck novels are to the cloistered lady trade.

Bob Dole ran for the presidency last year more to throw the bums out of
Hollywood than the bums out of Washington.

The National Endowment for the Arts has been muscled into the figleaf
business, and Congress has ordered the Internet to eschew anything
untoward for children, a futility on the order of commanding the wind
not to blow. In a number of communities, sexual prohibitionists are
rifling public libraries for dirty books to expunge.

You know, we've got some lollapalooza problems in this country. U.S.
education is falling behind international averages. We have a dangerous
and worsening gap between rich and poor Americans. The persistent racial
divide stymies us.

Sure, there's something to be said for virtue, at least in moderation,
but instead of endlessly secondguessing one another's personal lives,
wouldn't we do better to get cracking on the perfection of our common
life?

Real work might even distract us from our little vices.

Tom Teepen is national correspondent for Cox Newspapers.