How long did Scott Brown’s elation last after he snatched Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat away from the Democrats?
Poor Scott is scurrying around, trying to be a Tea Party, patriotic, Libertarian kind of a budget-whacking guy – except, of course, for a few juicy pieces of federal pork that he feels an obligation to grovel for, despite what he might have said when he was a Tea Party, patriotic, Libertarian kind of budget-whacking guy.
On alternate Thursdays, between 2 p.m. and 4:40, poor Brown must attempt to be a low-key, reasonable, suburban kind of Northeastern, sissy-boy Republican, urging us all to come together in a big, group hug.
Is America really torn asunder by all manner of philosophical, political and theological tick?
It seems like decades ago since Boston University political scientist Alan Wolfe (now at Boston College) wrote an amusing 1998 book, “One Nation After All,” suggesting that Americans strongly disagreed about only two things: bilingual education, and in-your-face, militant gay rights. On everything else, we sort of frowned in a friendly way and got along, in English, as long as you didn’t make a big deal about being gay.
Of course, the book was written long before we elected some Moslem, socialist, foreigner as president.
But, really, we do seem to come together on things that matter. We know that the Yankees are the anti-Christ; we know that tourists driving around a Boston traffic rotary are more dangerous than Iran with a nuclear bomb.
And perhaps the most encouraging sign that we can still all get along is the status of an explosive piece of legislation that would rock Massachusetts to its soul – except that, legislators seem to be supporting it in an almost-giddy, bipartisan sort of way.
Yes, assuming that President Obama doesn’t muck everything up by including it in the financial overhaul reform package, the Commonwealth citizenry may soon be able to purchase Bloody Marys on Sunday morning, with the roosters crowing in the background and the sun barely visible in the eastern sky.
Toddy Time
Even as we speak, majority leaders and minority leaders and Ways and Means chairmen and various legislative hangers-on are congratulating themselves on their constructive, bipartisan spirit that will allow us all to toddle on down to a commercial establishment for Sunday brunch and sip evil-demon-rum, before noon – despite the laws of God, Man and Massachusetts, which proclaim Sunday morning alcohol illegal and illicit.
On Thursdays and Tuesdays and Wednesdays and Saturdays – and even on Mondays and Fridays—your favorite breakfast diner is allowed to liquor you up as early as 8 a.m. And, indeed, nothing makes a morning loan closing go as smoothly as a bank officer with alcohol on his breath.
To nudge the Sunday drink-sale regulation up to 10 a.m. would reportedly help restaurants with their brunch business; encourage tourists to cancel their hotel reservations in the Bahamas and come to Massachusetts, instead; and free many waiters from the obligation to offer up a Sunday morning sermon on Blue Laws to disappointed, thirsty folks who believe that eating eggs Benedict without a Bloody Mary is sort of like consuming Banker & Tradesman without reading Cohen the Columnist.
The lingering Blue Law restrictions still on the books can be blamed on Charles II, a 17th Century despot who never knew of such things as Bloody Mary mix and celery stalks.
According to Chuck, Sunday was intended for “the dutyes of piety and true religion, publiquely and privately…”
In the colonies that became New England, the Catholics and Protestants handed off to each other periodic enthusiasm for the Sunday restrictions on commercial activity. The eventual decline and fall of most Sunday restrictions were blamed on Seventh-day Adventists, Jews and the National Football League.
It was 1962 when the Massachusetts Legislature gave Jews a pass on the existing Sunday closing laws. The Catholic newspaper “The Pilot” described it as a “shocking assault on the ‘day of rest’ statute…”
But, that was then and this is now. We’re in a new period of kissy-face ecumenism and political bipartisanship and we should all get together and celebrate the good times with a Mimosa. On Sunday. Early on Sunday. You pick the place.
