Free Out of My Mind by Andy Rooney Page B

industry. I always thought Dad did the dullest work I ever heard of but he liked it so much he always hoped I’d follow him into the business. I wonder if the people who did that survey like surveying.
    â€¢ The mayor of New York has proposed raising the tax on a pack of cigarettes by 50 cents. Smokers already pay $3 tax on a pack. A pack costs $6.90 in most stores. That means one cigarette costs about 34 cents. No one dares complain when they raise the tax on cigarettes, but there’s some question whether governments that raise cigarette taxes are trying to make money or reduce smoking. It’s wrong if their object is to make money. Why don’t they make smoking cigarettes illegal? Marijuana is illegal and I wouldn’t be surprised if tobacco was worse for people than grass. We might find a legal way to provide tobacco to people who were hopelessly hooked on it. They could be exempt from the no-smoking tobacco law for a limited period while they found a way to kick the habit.

    â€¢ Daniel Dennett, a professor at Tufts University in Boston, says in an interview: “Certainly, the idea of a God that can answer prayers and whom you can talk with, and who intervenes in the world—that’s a hopeless idea. There is no such thing.”
    â€¢ I hope you’ll think I’m doing the wise thing by having no comment to make on Professor Dennett’s statement.
    â€¢ I keep reading airline ads offering special, low-cost deals on certain flights. I have a suggestion for something they ought to include in their lower fares offer. They ought to charge less for anyone who has to sit in a middle seat. Maybe they ought to build thinner airplanes without any three-across seating. There would be no middle seat.
    â€¢ The report that Ford is closing fourteen plants and laying off 30,000 workers is terrible news for all America, not just for those 30,000 workers. If Ford is in trouble, America is in trouble.
    â€¢ I have a press ticket for the Super Bowl and it’s a good thing. Stubhub, the online ticket agency, has posted ticket prices for the game. Two tickets together on the 20-yard line in row 17 are $2,858 each. If you want to sit in a suite on the 20-yard line, one ticket will cost you $176,475. It makes saying, “I don’t wanna go anyway” very easy.
    â€¢ A man would have to need money pretty bad to take a job as a coal miner. I’ve never heard of a woman coal miner. Maybe they’re too smart to take the job.
    â€¢ A U.S. Army interrogator got off scot-free after an Iraqi general he was questioning died of suffocation. I hate it when I’m embarrassed to be an American.
    â€¢ I read where some real estate agents are betting that more and more older Americans are going to start retiring to Mexico instead of Florida. Maybe, but I’d be surprised. It has its problems, but “Florida” still sounds better to most Americans than “Mexico.”
    â€¢ It doesn’t matter what time of year it is, when I look through the newspaper, fur coats are always on sale. Does anyone ever buy a fur coat that isn’t “half off”?

PART TWO
    Feeling Philosophical
    No, I’m not committed to being open-minded. You can carry being broad-minded too far. By this time in my life, I know what I know and I know what I think and it’s very damned unlikely that I’m going to change.

THE EVIL THAT MEN DO
    Seldom do we get public figures so clearly evil as Osama bin Laden, Kenneth Lay and John Walker Lindh. Writing something negative about any one of them is so easy it’s almost unfair. Writers often get in trouble expressing unpopular opinions about people who are admired by some and disliked by others, but there’s nothing so bad you can say about these three that would evoke a pile of angry letters.
    I wish it was always that easy to assess the character of a public figure. I was talking to a good friend about a politician I’d met