Lawyer and National Review writer Shannen W. Coffin is Fed Up with oppressive governmental intrusions upon his Liberty, such as his inability to buy toxic pajamas for his children and the fact that he has to pick up after his dog after it takes a crap. He’s pretty upset, saying “you don’t have to be Ted Kaczynski to feel just a little overwhelmed.” Yikes!
Clearly, Coffin needs some perspective, stat, before the cop who tickets him for leaving dogshit all over the sidewalk gets a pipe bomb in his mailbox. To this end we shall borrow the humorous premise of the classic and not at all disturbing 1940 short A Case of Spring Fever, in which a man named Gilbert Willoughby learns that if you long for a world without springs, much to your sorrow, your wish will be granted by a demented animated spring-sprite named “Coily.” (No, really.) By the Power of the Internet, we hereby grant Coffin his wish: NO REGULATIONS! (Must be imagined in voice of Coily for Full Comedic Effect and Maximum Laffs.)
SCENE. The Coffin Household.
Bleary-eyed, I crawl out of bed, shuffle into the bathroom, and flip on the lights, but the bulb is out. I remind myself to get to Home Depot and stockpile a few cases of good, old-fashioned incandescent bulbs while I still can.
He has to flip the switch a few times to see if the problem is just that there’s no electricity, because maybe the Enron guys felt like sleeping in again. But then the light comes on — and the bulb explodes, burning off Coffin’s eyebrows. Houses don’t have to be wired to code, you know! NO REGULATIONS!
After my morning business, I flush an extra time, since 1.6 gallons just doesn’t seem to do the trick. But at least we’re saving water, huh? Hop in the shower, where the water trickles out at an EPA-limited 2.5 gallons per minute. I think I’ll stay in here for an extra ten minutes or so.
But of course the morning business bubbles up from the shower drain, because there’s no such thing as plumbing codes either! And it’s cheaper to have plumbing done by inexperienced immigrants who work for slave wages anyhow! Coffin leaps out of the tub, his bare feet caked with his own morning filth! NO REGULATIONS!
I walk out to get the morning paper and take out the trash. “Honey, make sure to put out the recycling, too.” Right. I hope we sorted this stuff correctly.
There’s no recycling — freedom! He’s eyebrowless and afflicted with stinkfoot, but maybe this no regulation thing will work out after all! But upon opening the front door Coffin is buried under a huge mountain of garbage. He pokes his head out of the trashpile with the inevitable comical banana peel dangling over his forehead: there’s no municipal sanitation department, and there’s no one to force the private garbage company from providing shitty service, because it’s a monopoly! NO REGULATIONS!
As I’m contemplating whether you can recycle pizza boxes, my dog fertilizes the lawn, so I go looking for a plastic bag (without holes).
Everyone is free to let their dogs poop everywhere, and so they do! And since everyone in this Brave Poo World is a Randian Objectivist, and since everybody who ever lost their marbles after reading Atlas Shrugged always assumed somebody else would be cleaning up the shit, the whole neighborhood is a fetid swamp of canine feces three feet deep! NO REGULATIONS!
I load my daughter into my fuel-inefficient SUV, asking myself how many hybrids the manufacturer had to make to offset the hit against Department of Transportation CAFE standards. She’s comfortably seated in her state-mandated booster seat.
The SUV immediately explodes because of a faulty fuel tank, spewing debris across the suburban pet-fecal hellscape that had been anyway poisoned because of leaded gasoline contamination! Still, beats having the government force you to do anything ridiculous, like keeping your kids from dying because they don’t have the correct car seats! I begin to suspect that the original is becoming too ludicrous to be amenable to satire! Anyhow, NO REGULATIONS!
With no time for a decent breakfast, we hop in the drive-through lane at McDonald’s. I wonder how they’re going to get all that nutrition information required by Obamacare on the drive-through menu. Or how I’m going to be able to read it. Not to worry, though — at least no insurance company can refuse to cover me for my high cholesterol now. Who says there is no such thing as a free breakfast?
That doesn’t even make any sense! Fast food places have been posting nutrition information long before Obama was president! And you’re a frickin’ DC lawyer and former Cheney apparatchik — you have insurance! But to continue the joke, you get yourself & your kid a nice Crack McMuffin and wash it down with McLaudanum Shakes to start your day — and it’s perfectly legal: remember, NO REGULATIONS!
When I get home that night, I lunge for the remote as the all-too-familiar Cialis ad is coming on. The kids don’t need to hear about side effects in excess of four hours. (Four hours? Really?)
This still happens because corporate capitalism still exists. Except… no FCC! You and your kids are now watching Bob & Liddy doing the nasty, perhaps wearing some sort of patriotic fetish gear! Freedom! NO REGULATIONS!
After sending them off to bed in their Consumer Product Safety Commission–compliant pajamas, I look at a stack of bills.
No more bills — hired goons just come to your house to beat the snot out of you once a month to collect on your Visa. And what are you gonna do about it? Also, all American children are dead because of Osh Kosh B’Gosh’s misguided foray into electric bathing footie pajama marketing! NO REGULATIONS!
Oh, and you’re a corporate lawyer…? No you’re not! Corporations just hire, say, Blackwater mercs to do what needs to be done. NO REGULATIONS!
Now, quit your bitching about having to take out the recycling like it means you’re worse off than the Russian peasants under Stalin, you great big geek of a baby, and go bore the daylights out of your horrible friends on the golf course about the wonders of trivial legislation, like a good little Gilbert Willoughby, won’t you?
