"Everybody's got to have somebody to look down on, someone to feel better than at any time they please."
THAT nugget from the pen of gifted somgwriter Kris Kristofferson comes to mind this morning, Day 1 in the smoke-free reign of hizzoner, Tom Menino.
If you haven't heard, it is now unlawful to light up inside any Boston restaurant.
"The new item on all menus will be clean air," the mayor quipped.
It was a safe boast. Who can quarrel with the merits of clean air? They certainly won't be questioned at this address, nor will the perils of second-hand smoke be disputed.
Yet there's increased annoyance here with unctuous anti-smoking zealots who, merciless in condemning someone else's vice, remain tight-lipped when it comes to acknowledging their own, a love affair with a drug of choice every bit as menacing as the infamous tobacco leaf.
Theirs is alcohol, and if you don't think it, too, represents a clear and present danger to innocent lives, check how many of those lives are claimed by drunk drivers, and how many more are traumatized by living with an alcoholic.
Tell them "second-hand alcohol" isn't a crisis, too.
Eight months ago the Clinton-Gore administration urged the levying of a $1.50 per-pack tax on cigarettes; three months ago Congressman Richard E. Neal, a Springfield Democrat, urged a reduction in the federal tax on beer.
Those two initiatives raised an idle thought here: If you were traveling along Route 128 tonight, who would pose the greater danger to you -- the driver puffing a Camel or the one quaffing a Michelob?
It's not the rightness of the war against tobacco that raises hackles here; it's the selectiveness of it.
Attorney General Scott Harshbarger, who hopes to be our next governor, wants to force tobacco retailers to plaster signs on their cash registers warning, "Kids: Smoking can kill you."
Sen. Warren Tolman (D-Watertown), running with him hoping to be our next lieutenant governor, proposed forcing offending merchants to display signs reading, "This store has violated the Massachusetts law forbidding the sale of tobacco to minors."
Harshbarger could now suggest a similar sign for package stores, perhaps one showing a gaunt Mickey Mantle weeks before his death, addressing a press conference in a hospital johnny, saying, "I would like to say to the kids out there, 'Take a good look at me. Don't be like me. God gave me a body and I just . . .' "
Mantle couldn't complete the sentence. Then again, he didn't have to; it was the picture worth a thousand words.
Tolman could also impose his "Scarlet A" on every bar, club and sporting facility convicted of selling alcohol to minors.
But these measures wouldn't go over as big as beating up on smokers, would they?
Barney Frank, no favorite here, is nonetheless admired for an ability to simplify issues, as he did in a piece he authored railing against those who sought to curtail compulsive gambling by banning casinos.
"The appropriate liberal approach," he contended, "is to give people as much education as possible, but not to outlaw some of their choices because we in the more enlightened class think they are unwise. Our response should be reasonable regulation and consumer education, not outright restrictions on choices with which we disagree."
There's also something to be said for trusting the marketplace.
If restaurants opted to be smoke-free, wouldn't they draw the business of the supposed masses who favor Menino's heavy-handedness? And wouldn't it follow that those continuing to allow smoking would suffer proportionately?
Why take that choice away from the consumer?
"We must protect our children and our families," Menino declared seven months ago, anticipating the coming of this day. "We can't put our heads in the sand and ignore realities."
Fine, Mr. Mayor.
Now show us how you plan to address the problems booze causes in your town.
Talk back to Joe Fitzgerald