Posted on 01/16/2019 6:26:39 PM PST by Rummyfan
On our Twelfth Night special, I mentioned one of my very favorite lines of lyric, from "These Foolish Things":
The waiters whistling as the last bar closes...
A century ago in America, the bars were closing but the waiters weren't whistling. One hundred years ago today - January 16th 1919 - Nebraska, Missouri and Wyoming voted to go dry, and put the Eighteenth Amendment over the top: Prohibition was ratified nationwide. A century on, Americans have relaxed somewhat, to the point where presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren can safely declare, "I'm-a git me some o' that there beer." But US attitudes to alcohol are still different from the rest of the west - and not unconnected, I would hazard, to the dreadful opioid and heroin and meth addictions that so afflict my corner of northern New Hampshire.
I usually use last-call-in-the-saloons-of-the-west in a metaphorical sense, but sometimes it's worth considering it literally. So, on this centennial of a very consequential day for American social habits, here's what I had to say about the demon booze eighteen years ago, as anthologized in my book Mark Steyn from Head to Toe:
(Excerpt) Read more at steynonline.com ...
Although she lacked the constitutional authority to legislate in this area, she had some financial muscle. She informed all 50 states that she would take away the Federal Government's highway funding from any jurisdiction that refused to raise the drinking age to 21. South Dakota went all the way to the Supreme Court, but the crazed regulatory megalomaniac won and took her legal team out to celebrate, presumably with Diet Coke.
The maniac's name was Elizabeth Dole...
“...where presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren can safely declare, “I’m-a git me some o’ that there beer.”...”
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She obviously went to the John Kerry school to learn how to talk like one of the common peasants.
“Ahm gonna git me a beer” — Jeez, how transparently phony can you be?
Imma fixin to wrastle me a grizzly.
Prohibition isn’t dead and keeps reappearing in ludicrous state laws regulating the sale and consumption of alcoholic beverages. While Minnesotans could drink in bars on Sunday and buy Prohibition era 3.2 low point beer on Sundays in gas stations, supermarkets and bait shops Sunday sale of liquor in liquor stores was banned for 160 years and finally was recinded in 2017. Minnesota also has strict liquor laws about what can be sold in the state. The law favors large distrbutors who have clout in the legislature A favorite Wisconsin beer called Spotted Cow is not approved for distribution in Minnesota and when a couple of entrepreneurs smuggled a keg of Spotted Cow into the state and deprived the state about $20 in tax revenue, state agents swarmed to their establishment with the zeal of Elliot Ness and the Untouchables, levying huge fines and taking their liquor license thus closing their business.
I bought a case of 21st Amendment IPA today to celebrate.
When my Wife and I visit her relatives in Minnesota we stock-up on liquor...
Virtually everything we buy is 1/2 the price we pay in Montana — yes, all liquor sales are 100% regulated by the state government.
At least in Minnesota there is competition and private sector sales of alcohol...
We’re headin’ there for Easter!
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