That is, apart from shameless (read: irrelevant) propaganda value?
This one really baffles me. Like a can of light beer, it’s an example of something that may seem significant at first glance, but doesn’t survive scrutiny (or, in light beer’s case, actually swallowing the insipid liquid). As a prelude to what follows, I know who Gary Creamer is, but I don’t know him personally.
New Albany mayor urged to sign smoking ban, by Dick Kaukas (C-J).
Gary Creamer, a New Albany resident, said the city is losing restaurant business because residents have so few smoke-free places to go for meals.
Creamer said he and a group of friends eat together once a week and spend $17,000 to $20,000 annually. He said he and his friends have gone to New Albany restaurants only twice during the past year because so few are smoke-free.
Admittedly, that’s a lot of money to pump into Little Chef’s coffers, given that it might be the very last restaurant hereabouts that doesn’t actually have a non-smoking seating area. There may be others, but of course the obvious question is this:
Given Gary Creamer’s eagerness to publicly advertise the amount of money that his group withholds from still-smoky New Albany restaurants, are those establishments really the sort of place that Creamer’s party wants to be seen patronizing?
Consequently, it seems fair to ask why on earth Gary Creamer and Company’s discretionary spending habits have been made part of this noble campaign to protect workplace health?
Is there even the remotest connection between worker safety and conspicuous consumption of this sort?
I’m searching in vain for a causal relationship, and I’m open to assistance in locating it. Surely it’s fair to ask: Where and to whom is Creamer’s party constrained from transferring wealth because of second hand smoke? To put it bluntly, if Little Chef suddenly was smoke-free, would Creamer’s party be dropping dollars therein?
And: Isn’t is somehow unseemly that even the ban’s proponents can’t stick to their own magic bullet of science, and must instead hoist an example of personal preference for us to lacerate?
Why again is it that in the midst of scrum of this magnitude, political interpretations are somehow off limits to contrarians?
I’ll have more to say a bit later on that particular angle.
