Two things in the news caught my eye this weekend. First, the Kuwaiti Oil Minister Sheikh Ahmed Fahd al-Sabah called for fellow OPEC counties to cut back on oil production because the price of oil was falling too quickly. I'll grant you, the price of oil on world markets has tumbled in the last week, but we are still looking at oil priced at $42.50 a barrel, down from the fifty-dollar range last month. First, even in the low forties, the price of oil is still too high. Second, I thought the Kuwaitis were our friends. Perhaps this rat bastard doesn't remember who it was that saved his ass back in 1991. Perhaps he doesn't remember that a group of countries, led primarily by the US, pushed the Iraqis out of Kuwait during the first gulf war. That's gratitude for you. It's in times of crisis one finds out who his friends are. Sure, Gordon Gecko said "Greed... is good," and we all want to be paid as much as we can, but enough is enough. This ungrateful Kuwaiti wants to milk us for all he can and he probably feels he has someone in the white house that is in complete agreement with him. The last oilman I felt we could trust was Jed Clampett. You may argue that there were not many members of his family with any formal education, only his nephew Jethro, but I'd put Jethro up against dubya in a battle of wits, anytime.
The other item in the news that caught my interest was an increase in the use of hookahs by Americans to smoke their tobacco. I'll grant you, puffing on a Lucky is not very romantic in this day and age. Sharing a bowl with friends using a community hookah may seem more social than catching a quick smoke break on the back porch, but I am wondering where this will all lead. Will these things start showing up at clubs and coffee houses? Will politicians begin crusading against hookahs and then against coffee saying that our young are being lured into coffee houses only to be encouraged to try flavored tobacco? The next obvious step would be for an outcry against coffee, with the argument that coffee is the first step to harder stuff.
I'm totally against the use of tobacco. I think the evidence is there to dissuade us from exposing ourselves to the stuff, but one is never going to legislate tobacco usage out of existence. I do, however, enjoy my morning cup of coffee. My concern is that our politicians will begin a hapless effort to outlaw coffee saying it is the first step to tobacco usage. They will never be able to outlaw tobacco because it is produced in the US and the tobacco companies will be able to fight off any attempt. But we don't grow coffee here and politicians will be able to launch a campaign against it. They'll put forth the argument that coffee usage leads to harder stuff like tobacco, then to marijuana; then to hashish and then heroin.
I can see the public service advertisements, now. A clean and innocent young boy walks into the kitchen and to the coffee pot, half full of orgiastic brown liquid, on the kitchen cabinet. He looks around the room to insure he is unseen and pours himself a cup. A look of intoxicated ecstasy passes over his face and the picture blurs then fades to a scene of the same young man, a bit older, lying between two trash receptacles in a dark alley. He tightens the rubber tube around his bicep and presses the syringe into his arm and his eyes fade into that same look of intoxicated ecstasy.
"It’s only a short step from the coffee pot to the opium den," says the voice of an unseen announcer. "You can stop this. Don't wait until tomorrow; give to the National Organization for Coffee Prohibition. Write your congressman today. Tomorrow may be too late."
It will be only a short step until the religious right begins to attack coffee from the pulpit. Ministers from all across the land will encourage their congregations to get out to vote against coffee; to write their elected officials and demand a constitutional amendment to outlaw coffee. Starbucks will assume the role of the great Satan and the right will boycott.
Right wing talk radio will stay out of the fray at first, as I'm sure as misguided as many of the talk radio hosts are, they still enjoy a steaming cup of joe in the morning. That is, until one talk radio host, while frequenting his local coffee house, is disturbed as he sips his delicious java to see a group of young men, drinking coffee, sharing in their hookah a bowl of tobacco, when two of the men exchange a brief kiss. The talk radio host will have a paradigm change in his opinion of coffee, not unlike the biblical story of St. Paul on the road to Damascus. But rather than being blinded by the light, in his mind he will make the shocking connection: coffee leads to tobacco, marijuana, hashish, heroin, and then, worst of all:
HO-MO-SEX-U-AL-ITY!
He will began a nationwide campaign against coffee and all of the other right wing talk radio hosts, not wanting to be left behind will join in. Coffee will be un-American and any political candidates drinking from a steaming cup will be branded with the scarlet letter of being unpatriotic. Even the left wing and politicians in the center will separate themselves from any hint of coffee usage.
I hope I haven't upset you with this frightening view of things to come. But for me, I'll have another cup, with sugar, please.
Because that's the way we drink our java in Jimbo's world.
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