Alexandria Petri is back with more biting and hilarious satire. This time she takes on Ted Cruz's ridiculous charge that the government wants to limit the amount of beer you can consume.
After the director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism said in an interview that he was watching Canada’s new two-drinks-per-week recommendation, and he could see making a similar suggestion for Americans if the data warranted it, the Outrage Machine hopped to it. “Does President Biden want to limit Americans to two beers a week?” a Fox News correspondent asked Monday in the White House press briefing. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) showed up on Newsmaxwith a Shiner in hand, complaining that the Left Wants to Control Every Aspect of Your Life. “They’re trying to go after and regulate ceiling fans,” he said, “and now these idiots have come out and said ‘Drink two beers a week.’”
Cruz seems to think that the people in charge of health guidelines are meddling directly in people’s lives. That such guidance, if implemented — which it hasn’t been! — would be not a mere suggestion but tyranny.
And, of course, that is exactly … true! Ted Cruz has never once exaggerated and he is not starting now. Everyone remembers the Gas Stove Purges, when government agents came into our homes to yank out our ranges, often causing hundreds of dollars’ worth of damage to the underlying fixtures, while our children wept and clung to our apron strings and we gnashed our teeth in frustration. Now, all the gas stoves that were not immediately melted down into electric vehicles have been pressed into service as podiums for Satanists to deliver sermons (or, worse, deliver NOTHING!). I remember how, after the Stove Purge, we all were urged to act as bounty hunters, watching to see whether our neighbors or co-workers had caramelized anything under suspicious circumstances, and then the state of Texas gave us money. I am pretty sure that is what happened. That, and not something else.
These guidelines are serious business. We all know how stringently they have always been enforced. Once, I ate six more than my daily recommended serving of pinto beans and I still must send annual reports to the government to prove I haven’t repeated the offense. I had to embroider a bean on my bodice and walk among the community while everyone cried, “Shame! Shame!” I remember those terrible days of the Let’s Move initiative, when I took a 30-second break from moving in order to adjust my shoelaces, and the IRS ate my whole family.
Or the day when they changed the food pyramid from a stacked pyramid of food to a series of triangles urging someone to work out — how many people were whisked off to the Food Pyramid Reeducation Facility. I am still there! I could never wrap my mind around what a tomato was, deep down, and whether it was recommended or not. I haven’t seen the outside world in years!
I’m glad we’re mad. No matter that the new guidelines don’t exist. When they do, I can anticipate how bad it will be. Without our weekly allotment of beers, how will we know what presidential candidate we like for unclear reasons?It won’t just be limiting men to two drinks. Why, I hear they won’t even let men describe how whiskey tastes. And in my experience, that is half the fun of drinking whiskey. If you can’t say something like “this is so peaty … I am getting hints of the Piltdown Man in there,” it’s like you didn’t drink it at all. Soon, I hear, if you even utter the phrase “this has hints of,” someone from the Government comes and slaps the drink right out of your hands. And I doubt they’ll stop there. Remember the ceiling fans? If you don’t remember, that’s because they erased your memory, too! All of these things have happened, just as invasively as I’ve described. Again, I am writing this from the facility where they are making me recite every piece of text from ChooseMyPlate.gov before I am allowed to consume my daily bean.
The p(o)int is, Ted Cruz is correct. The government needs to stop meddling with Americans’ private lives by doing horrible, invasive things like one official suggesting in an interview with a British tabloid that he might possibly change his recommendations for how many drinks a week are healthy. It is good that the people are rising up. If this is not tyranny, what is? Certainly not things that are happening in Texas on a daily basis, like seizing control of people’s uteruses and denying trans kids gender-affirming care. No, this is a free country, and the government needs to stop meddling so we can go back to enjoying our majestic freedoms like being forced to give birth, whether your doctor recommends it or not. Or watching the loudest, angriest parents get veto power over what books your kids are allowed to read.
You know the Mel Brooks quip: Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall in a sewer and die. This is like that, but for government overreach. Tyranny is when you say that you might suggest I drink less beer; freedom is when I force you to give birth and deny you autonomy over your own body. Hooray, beer! I love beer.