There’s a grassroots movement across the state to have me named “Connecticut’s Official Columnist” — sort of like being named Connecticut’s official Poet Laureate, except unlike those modern, over-intellectual, academic poets, I actually know how to rhyme and stuff.
While I’m flattered by the effort, I’m reluctant to encourage it, because it just ain’t easy to get such stuff through the General Assembly, which is all distracted by frivolous things like budget deficits and gubernatorial elections.
To pursue such a major piece of legislation would usually require an army of lobbyists. Given what the Hartford Business Journal pays me, I could afford maybe one lobbyist on a Tuesday, between 3 and 3:30 p.m.
The sneaky (and thus, most effective) way to achieve success with the Cohen bill would be to find a friendly legislator and have him or her tack the Cohen stuff on to another piece of legislation, as sort of an amendment/footnote kind of thing. This is legislative art. The main bill should either be something very important and complex and urgent (with the “Cohen” part lost in the shuffle), or an obscure, non-controversial thing that would just sail through with no one even noticing the “Cohen” part: “Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives in General Assembly convened that Article 15, Paragraph 4, Line 23 of the General Statutes be amended to encourage kids to love their mothers and, oh, by the way, to name Cohen as Connecticut’s Official Columnist.”
Legislation wanders around through various committees prior to the final vote, allowing each committee the theoretical ability to offer up its expertise. The danger is that if even one cranky, bored legislator happens to notice the Cohen thing, and has some sort of grudge against Cohen, even though he’s lovable, the “official columnist” thing could be killed in some committee, without a public hearing or appropriate public tribute to Cohen.
I don’t want to discourage you, given how hard you’ve all worked to hold your massive Tea Parties to protest high taxes, big government, prohibition of Sunday beer sales, and lack of official recognition for Cohen. It’s just that I’m still in mourning over a piece of legislation that for the third, or fourth, or 15th year in a row, was quietly, ruthlessly, stomped to death last year by the legislators.
Year after year, hoping against all hope, state Rep. Linda Gentile and state Sen. Joe Crisco introduce “An Act Concerning Designation of the Ballroom Polka as the Official State Polka” — only to see it dance away and disappear among other legislative business. Some cynics argue that the bill is dismissed as trivial and quickly forgotten, but that is not so. As one Democratic Party legislative staffer told me, under a cloak of anonymity to protect her life, “it’s amazing how controversial the polka bill sometimes is.”
See? Something sinister is going on. Just last year, polka music was eliminated as an awards category at the Grammys. There is a none-of-that-Polish-music-in-my-neighborhood movement committed to stomping the polka to death. Back in the 1990s, Coors ran a beer ad featuring two guys who purposely played polka music on a jukebox, just to clear out a bar. This anti-polka thing is vicious.
Another possibility: the legislators in the General Assembly thought the bill was about dancing to the Polka, which they interpreted as “pole dancing,” which is something scantily dressed girls do in strip clubs.
The polka bill wasn’t even introduced this year. That’s very sad — but it does create an opening for Cohen on his march to be Official State Columnist.
Laurence D. Cohen is a freelance writer.
