By Cal Beverly
Publisher

Golly, I thought I was just a wide-eyed innocent — shocked to learn that some local high school booster clubs were selling alcoholic beverages to raise money for extracurricular activities.

According to a blustery piece by my counterpart at what is visited upon Fayette Countians as a “daily newspaper,” I'm a trouble-making “hack” who “loves nothing better than to cause partisan and ideological community skirmishes,” one who has “made a religion out of creating controversy and crisis out of the minutiae.”

Golly. Is all that spelled correctly?

Golly, did our news story — written by a band parent — really “damn” the boosters?

Wide-eyed, once-rabid, long-ago booster me, I just thought we brought the matter to public attention in what seemed to me to be a story more sympathetic to the funds-challenged booster clubs than any “damning” that might be done. I guess the bit dog hollers.

Well, I am properly chastised and shamed (see letter to the editor on this page). And dwarfed by the impeccable logic used by all the pro-beer boosters — it's legal, we're adults, get over it. Not to mention that state lottery money is used to educate our kids and booze-generated tax dollars pay for classrooms, etc.

I am awed by the utilitarian efficiency of the fund-raising beer boosters. If it's legal, then it must be okay.

So I have a Swiftian proposal: Let's forget this penny-ante beer stuff for a good cause.

I mean, this is for the kids, right? This worthy end obviously ennobles all our sweaty means to raise ever-increasing piles of cash for absolutely necessary Disneyworld trips and state-of-the-art cheerleading routines.

Therefore, I propose that all us sideline hacks set up a top-of-the-line Internet soft porn site. All legal, you understand. Nothing that would get us in trouble with the law. And we will allow only 18 and above “adults” to enter our pricey risque area. Think of the big bucks we could raise!

It seems that with all us journalistic “druggies, alcoholics, buffoons, cry-babies, cheats and liars ... and beer-drinkers ... in the newspaper business” (Whew! What a self-portrait!), the least we fellow hacks could do for the kids is to extend our publishing efforts to the World Wide Web and the best triple-XXX site in Fayette County! Think of it — enough moolah to finance new uniforms for the kids every six months!

A hack bonus: Maybe our printing quality would improve in cyberspace, and who'd worry about spell-checking Miss November?

What's that you say? You are shocked by my proposal?

But why? It's legal. We're all adults here. And it's for the kids. What's your problem?

No, hack; you've crossed the line here. Boosters raising money through the lucrative and legal business of Internet soft-porn is unthinkable. What would our kids think? And what would the community think?

Exactly. Where's the line? And when is it crossed?

For the record, The Citizen is offering to donate more than $300 worth of advertising space each week — a quarter-page ad — during the appropriate school seasons for all local high school booster clubs to publicize their time-honored fund-raising efforts: Selling hot dogs, burgers, pretzels, lemonade, candy and citrus fruits, etc. We'll eat the costs to help raise money for the kids.

Just one catch: This offer is for the clubs that don't sell alcoholic beverages, cigarettes and other consumables so very obviously inappropriate for the very kids the money is supposed to be raised for.

Selling beer is certainly the right of adults. And they are welcome to raise all the money they can, without our help or support.

(For the benefit of my hacked counterpart, Swift was an English satirist. That means he wrote satires. That means the porn proposal is an exaggerated joke with a serious point.)

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