Bill Moeller Commentary: Today’s Potpourri: A Mixture of Tobacco, Pot, Logic and Medals

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Statistics can be strange things at times, can’t they? I read recently that marijuana is an increasing factor in fatality accidents. I had read somewhere else that alcohol is also involved in most of those same accidents. Strange, isn’t it? We can blame one thing but not the other.

Oh, well, I guess that’s human nature. Our federal government can decry the use of tobacco and its all too common links to fatal diseases (and medical expenses shared by you and I) but can still grant tobacco allotments at the same time. You don’t think that’s because tobacco companies threaten to withdraw campaign contributions to key legislators, do you? Nah.

I always read the other Chronicle columnists’ writings, whether I agree with them or not, but they don’t always agree with me either, so I guess it evens out. I sure agreed with John McCroskey’s comments last Saturday that mere participation in a sport is not enough to warrant a trophy. It needs to be said, and acted upon.

Is there some event or circumstance to which we can point that did away with the archaic notion that we should earn what we receive? Shucks, I don’t remember a single friend who got an allowance back when we were growing up. We even had chores to do, for gosh sakes!

This nefarious practice even affects adults. At last year’s annual gathering of Korean War vets at the Veterans Memorial Museum, representatives of the Korean government handed out medals to all of us. I felt embarrassed. I might have accepted one for the 20-mile forced march our platoon once made between two different drop zones, 40 miles behind the enemy lines, (and back again the next day) but none has been offered.

Do you think that maybe I can blame President Obama for that? After all, one recent letter writer seems to hold him responsible for the murder of a woman in San Francisco by an illegal alien. The connection wasn’t explained, but I guess such a position comes in handy. It absolves us from the need to consider that issues usually have more than one side.

Getting back to tobacco, why not blame Obama for the lack of enough willpower to stop being a drug addict and quit smoking.



I’ve said this before, that I can’t understand why a person who is addicted to a drug — nicotine in this case — can deny that he or she is a drug addict. I remember a comedian in the early days of radio who invariably made the statement, “Monkeys is the cwaziest people.” I think the reverse applies in more than enough cases to be accepted as a truism.

Enough of that. Well, the fair is over, my daughter has taken a flight back to Georgia and old dad got a chance to show off, singing songs of the 1920s at the fair. Each year the response gets better, and the crowd size increases slowly. 

How can it not increase when the initial performance five years ago drew an audience of 10? Counting those sitting in the shade across the midway, there were about 50 this year.

This past week I spotted another example of TV’s closed captioning printing a word different enough from the spoken one to give a whole new meaning to what was said. A newscaster was describing a sinkhole in Florida that appeared on the site of a previous one. The accompanying closed caption printed it as a “stink hole.” I have no comment, except to say I do not make these up!

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Bill Moeller is a former entertainer, mayor, bookstore owner, city council member, paratrooper and pilot living in Centralia. He can be reached at bookmaven321@comcast.net.