A mixture of absurdity, lunacy

Published 3:11 am Tuesday, December 6, 2005

Someone in Tennessee has offered a bill that would make it illegal to watch pornography while you are driving. Just a couple of years ago, Tennessee passed a law that said if you run over a wild animal in the road, you can take it home and eat it. Meanwhile Georgia has a bill in the hopper that would kill a law that says you have to wear a helmet while operating a motorcycle.

This is a grand mixture of absurdity and lunacy.

Looking at all this and other stuff stirred into one bowl, it would seem to me that we are sending too many empty-headed people to our state houses for too long a period. I’m sure if we did some sampling, we would find other states with as much comedy. I’m surprised someone in our general assemblies has not offered a bill that requires royalties on their ninkumpoopness because it is fodder for all the stand-up comedians.

But bless our founding fathers, they, in so many words, said if we elect people and they make fools of themselves, we have the right to laugh at them and even make a profit off them if we can.

Now let’s take that pornography thing. What incident prompted that bill? I would also think it should be against the law to pick a banjo and drive at the same time. And certainly I don’t think assembling a tricycle is a good thing to do in five o’clock traffic. And would watching pornography while driving be worse than watching the Jerry Springer Show while driving?

Now we all know that some people go through a metamorphosis when they get behind the wheel of a car. It’s a zone unlike any other where little blue-haired ladies will give someone the finger, preachers will cuss and hockey players … well I don’t know what else they could do.

And I suppose if someone tapped someone else’s bumper while the guy in the rear car is watching “Debbie Does Dallas,” then I guess that would be the argument that issues could escalate. But by the same token, a good banjo costs a heck of a lot more than a tape of “Debbie” so if that G-string breaks and pops the picker in face and the neck of that instrument gets all crumpled in the steering column resulting in a pileup … well, that imagery speaks for itself, I think.

We’ve often heard the expression, “there ought to be a law.” Well, we’ve got more laws now than China’s got chopsticks and Carter’s got liver pills.

What we need is “common sense.”

I fully realize that common sense cannot be legislated. I’m not even sure it can be handed down. And I don’t expect to see an epidemic of it any time soon, but I sure wish research would reveal that we had a few more carriers.

Now about road kill and Brunswick stew. Did anyone every argue in Tennessee that if you ran over a possum you couldn’t call home to mama and tell her to throw some taters and carrots in a pot — that you had the main course. Prior to that law, did the state ever claim any rights to that carcass?

Now don’t get ahead of me here. You see where this thing could really get complex. Let’s suppose the possum was from Georgia and some kid from Dahlonega, riding his Harley without a helmet and watching “Silicon Ladies,” hit this possum as he was headed into Chattanooga? We could have a multi-jurisdictional conundrum. Meanwhile, Jay Leno and Dave Letterman would have raw product (not counting the possum) for an entire week.

Since there is no such thing as the “last number” and no one can count the grains of sand on the beach, we must suppose that there will never be a time when we run out of books to print laws.

Meanwhile, it’s said that humor is good for the soul. Depending on how deep we go with that meaning, some of our lawmakers might even be classified as holy men.