Write an opinion piece for the Hartford Business Journal. Get yourself published and send a copy to your mom. She will be very proud.
But don’t call yourself a “columnist.” To be a columnist requires years of obedience to the Columnist Code of Ethics and Aggressive Marketing; and a license from the Connecticut Columnist Regulatory Board Association Agency. To get that license, you must appear before the board, made up of incumbent Connecticut columnists who, by the way, you are trying to put out of business with your amateurish dabbling in our stuff.
But we are completely objective.
Oh, sure, when you’re flirting with some girl on the next bar stool, you’re free to abuse the term “columnist” when describing yourself. But no “columnist” business cards, no billboards or newspaper ads identifying yourself as some sort of columnist or something until and if you get the license.
Well. OK. I sort of made it up. You don’t need a license or credentials or good ideas or anything to advertise yourself as a columnist.
Not that it wouldn’t be a very good idea to have Cohen and a few pals decide who is worthy of punditry with a pen.
Interior Design Limits
I got the idea from the State of Connecticut, which prohibits interior designers from advertising themselves as interior designers, unless they have been licensed by the state.
That advertising restriction is now under legal assault from three interior designers who aren’t actually interior designers, except that they say they are interior designers, and they do interior design work, and take money for telling people to move the champagne fountain in their living room to the master bedroom and other such stuff.
The lawsuit, filed in Hartford Superior Court, is brought to us by the merry little band of Libertarian cowboys known as the Institute For Justice — the same mischievous lawyers who tortured Connecticut and New London about the eminent domain case that staggered all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court.
As a matter of law, Institute For Justice sort of lost that eminent domain case, but the public relations victory was huge: the nation learned, and was outraged by the revelation that state and local government can conspire to force you off your property so that private developers prettier and richer than you are can build something cool.
The institute often works that way. They tend to find articulate, appropriately pathetic clients; they tend to find government regulation that ranges from sort of silly to devious — and they unleash legal and public relations talent to tell the world that government isn’t always your friend. The best case of late: a challenge to a Louisiana regulation requiring the licensing of flower arrangers. Put down that petunia, or we’ll shoot.
Murky Stuff
The institute’s legal challenge in Connecticut is technically a First Amendment case of sorts, questioning whether the designers’ free speech rights are unconstitutionally curbed by the advertising ban. This is murky stuff. “Commercial speech” is vulnerable to more government slapping around than other kinds of chatter. Beyond the legal complexities, the case reflects the institute’s theology: Much government licensing regulation is a gift to incumbents already working in the field. The institute is roaming the country, filing similar interior-design challenges.
In these kinds of actions, the defense’s best hope is often a “public health and safety” whine, suggesting that one of these unofficial designers will recommend moving a support beam and your house will come crashing down in an unattractive heap.
I’m going home now to decorate my study. I think it’s legal for me to say “decorate,” as long as I’m not designing or anything.
Laurence D. Cohen is a freelance writer.
