The music of Sheryl Crow is fantastic. It’s in my iPod, and I listen to it fairly frequently. Crow is a great musician, singer and songwriter. But she knows shit about shit. Let me tell you what I mean.

Sheryl Crow has teamed up with the environmental activist Laurie David in an effort to help the environment, in something called a ‘Virtual March’. Laurie, with her hilarious husband Larry David (of Sienfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm fame), owns two huge homes and flies in a private jet around America to spread her message about reducing carbon emissions. She’s the quintessential environmentalist hypocrite: you know, the kind who spends years preaching about reducing emissions while in the process of emitting hundreds of times more per year than the average citizen. Genius.

According to her blog, Crow has decided to sit down and try to figure out how to save the world. “Although my ideas are in the earliest stages of development, they are, in my mind, worth investigating,” she says. Well, let’s take a look at them. One of the ideas is a clothing line with a “dining sleeve” that acts as an ersatz napkin. This would reduce the wastefulness of paper napkins. No?

Well how about this one (we could call it Crow’s environmentalist magnum opus): “I propose a limitation be put on how many squares of toilet paper can be used in any one sitting. …. Now, I don’t want to rob any law-abiding American of his or her God-given rights [of course not!], but I think we are an industrious enough people that we can make it work with only one square per restroom visit, except, of course, on those pesky occasions where 2 to 3 could be required.”

Now, friends, I don’t want to get too graphic here. (More about that in a second.) But I’ll confess that my own visits to the bathroom frequently require much more than one square of toilet paper if the job is to be done properly. Ideally, and for maximal hygiene, I would recommend the use of wet wipes instead of, or as well as, toilet paper. One wet wipe may suffice where one square of regular toilet paper may not. But that would be even less environmentally sound, would it not? The point is that Crow doesn’t know shit about shit. One square? A maximum of two or three? What is she, constipated? I don’t know what she’s eating, but it can’t be healthy.

Sometimes it’s difficult for non-libertarians to believe that the state has gone too far in the encroachment of individual liberty and “God-given rights”. I would suggest to you, dear readers of all political persuasions, that in the event our political discourse actually seriously begins to consider state intervention in the wiping of the arses of individual citizens, that we need no further evidence.

John Wright

johnwright@softhome.net