Disappoint mints banned from University of Tennessee, Economy tanking, High unemployment rates, Hopium running dangerously low

From John Kass and the Chicago Tribune August 5, 2011.

“So what do you give a beleaguered president who just ate a mess of birthday barbecue with his friends from Chicago?

Disappoint-mints.

Yes, Disappoint-mints, the breath mints with President Barack Obama’s likeness on the cover.

After you chow down on some baby backs and corn and birthday burgers while roughly 9 percent of the nation is out of work and thinking about dog food recipes, there’s only thing that’ll freshen your barbecue breath.

Mints in a box with Obama’s face and the slogan:

“This is Change? Disappoint-mints.”

With the economy tanking and overwhelmingly high unemployment rates, and the nation’s supply of Hopium running dangerously low, who wouldn’t want something sweet and tasty?

Like a Disappoint-mint.

They were on sale at the University of Tennessee bookstore for only $2.99 when an angry Democratic state legislator, Joe Armstrong, declared the mints were offensive.

He insisted that those offensive mints be removed from the shelves.

You’d think a Democrat would support a diversity of mints and champion equal opportunity of flavors, but with Obama in political trouble, tolerance becomes a casualty.

Armstrong got angry. The meek University of Tennessee caved. And those insensitive Obama Disappoint-mints were yanked off the shelves.

“… When you operate on state and federal dollars, you ought to be sensitive to those type of politically specific products,” the Knoxville News Sentinel quoted Armstrong as saying. “If it was a private entity or corporation or store, (that’s different), but this is a state university. We certainly don’t want in any way to put the university in a bad light by having those political (products), particularly aimed at defaming the president.”

Armstrong, who will be known henceforth as Mr. Free Speech, told the newspaper that pulling the mints off the shelves did not violate the First Amendment, because the mints were not “educational material.”

In other words, Armstrong is a complete moron and is just making up random stuff in the name of Obama.

“With a book or something of that nature, then fine, but (the mints are) sort of a discretionary product they have,” Armstrong told the News Sentinel. “It wasn’t viewpoint-neutral. Very specifically insulting to the president.”

We called Glenn Reynolds, professor of law at the University of Tennessee and boss of the widely read blog Instapundit.

“My first response is that there’s no candy exception in the First Amendment,” said Reynolds.

“… But it’s far more suppressive when a legislator travels down there in person and demands that they be taken off the shelf,” he said.

Reynolds said that with the election coming up, people will have to learn to be more thick-skinned.

That’s the noble ideal. But it seems to me that as elections near, skins tend to stretch thinner and thinner.”

“Obama insists that government can lift the country out of recession, but all the meddling has made it worse, and Thursday’s drop of more than 500 points in the Dow Jones Industrial Average highlights the futility.

So many Americans are nervous. And political hacks like Joe Armstrong are merely a symptom.

But all that can change.

All we’ve got to do is ban all the Disappoint-mints.”

Read more:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/ct-met-kass-0805-20110805,0,7782665,full.column