A Mugging in South Park

Mack Hall

Last week we learned that 21% of Lamar University students are working their way through school; the other 79% voted to spend someone else’s money for a football team.

The increase of eight dollars per credit hour works out to $120 extra each semester for a student taking a typical load of fifteen hours. That would buy maybe one textbook or part ownership in a cup of fashionable chain-store coffee.

This send-the-bill-to-my-mommy-and-daddy-fee comes one month after the State of Texas imposed another tax / fee / contribution / love offering of five dollars per consumer at strip clubs. The five dollars are to go to a fund – there’s always a fund – to assist women who are the victims of sexual abuse. The State of Texas bureaucrats who will administer this fund (solely out of the goodness of their pancreases) will determine who qualifies as a victim and will distribute the money (after expenses) to other State of Texas functionaries to counsel the officially approved victims.

If our elected State of Texas bureaucrats are indeed concerned about victims of sexual abuse, wouldn’t it save time and effort if the money went straight to the dancers at the club?

And does a girl working her way through college as a dancer at Les Clubbe Le Chat du Exotique catch a break on her tuition?

Following the logic of guilt-by-association, perhaps Lamar University donate the student football fee to the victims of violence. After all, one reads on the ‘net (and if it’s on the ‘net it must be true) that on Super Bowl Sunday normally mild-mannered men inspired by a good tackle or a blocked punt beat up women. Men are such beasts.

Lamar University could combine these ideas in order to fund a football team: have the players moonlight as topless dancers. Who wouldn’t pay extra to see a lineman in a thong bench-pressing a Volkswagen to a jazz-mix recording of Andy Williams singing “Moon River!”

For something more exciting the quarterback could do calisthenics on a pole while the theme from Hot Fuzz blares through the speakers.

This could give a new meaning to “tight end.”

To encourage the customers to buy more Saigon tea the coaches might wear cute little dresses and sit on dudes’ knees and coo sweet nothings in their ears.

The State taxes us for good things that are just not do-able in the private sector: roads, cops, courts, and pomade for Governor Perry’s helmet-hair. Beyond those needs, the State should exercise restraint in picking the pockets of people who work.

If someone wants to console unhappy strippers, great. If someone wants to play football, she should have at it. If someone wants to attend a football match, fine. While we’re at it, Lamar’s chess club should have cheerleaders, too. But just because someone in government has a good idea doesn’t mean the guy out in the weather switching rail cars across the road from Lamar should almost automatically be taxed for it.