Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, May 17, 1993                   TAG: 9305150251
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: BEN BEAGLE
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

LITE DRINKERS GETTING OFF LIGHTLY

That morning, I swore an awful oath that once I no longer needed to endure things like that to make a living, I would forget about politics.

But as an American who cares about whither his country is tending, I must tell you that I think that excluding beer from proposed new federal taxes on alcoholic beverages would be discrimination of the worst kind.

This is not to say that I have anything against beer drinkers. Some of my best friends, including my only begotten son, are beer drinkers.

Beer has figured in some of the great country music and there was a time when I adored Pabst Blue Ribbon, until age, or something, made me swell up when I drank beer.

In my natural, non-beered state I was considerably swollen, so I gave the brew up.

But to set beer drinkers apart as a tax-exempt class flies into the face of and does violence to the American Way of Life.

There's all of this talk about Six-Pack Joe and Sue being the backbone of nation and the salt of the earth.

I can tell the Clinton Administration right now that the masses also drink Jack Daniels and Old Forester and Old Overshoe, and they shouldn't have to pay extra taxes while the Miller Lite crowd gets off free.

Speaking of country music, it couldn't have existed without bourbon. How many good songs have been written while looking at the world through the bottom of a shot glass?

I know some of you beer drinkers are going to point out that nice little tune "There's a Tear in My Beer," and all I can say is I don't believe a beer drinker ever had a juke box in his head. Bourbon does things like that to you.

What do you think all of those cowboys used to drink in the End of the Trail Saloon? That's right. Bourbon. The guys who played comic relief in those movies drank beer.

The beer drinkers in the country ought to be offended that they are thought of as mindless, suds-guzzling, working-class automatons who would vote for anybody who kept new taxes off the brew.

Most beer drinkers I know are good Americans, willing to make all those sacrifices the president is always talking about.

I say to the president: Let's get real, Mr. President.

Let's tax the dickens out of stuff like peach schnapps.

You ever hear either of a country music hero or heroine who'd come anywhere near a shot of peach schnapps?