What money can buy

Someone once said that the rich are different from you and me. Well, duh. Of course they are, they have more money.

Money seems to make a difference in more than just the ability to buy stuff. Only the very rich seem to be able to take up causes. The rest of us are too busy trying to keep up with gas prices. It seems that Sheryl Crow has taken up saving the earth and her suggestion for conservation is that people should use only one square of toilet paper per visit to the restroom.

Now I don't know where she's buying her Charmin, but the stuff I buy won't cut it. One square? Maybe you can blot your lipstick on one square, but you can't blot much of anything else.

Decency prevents me from exploring this subject further. We could, you know, consider the possibility of recycling as in taking it a step beyond cloth diapers vs. disposable ones and make reusable bathroom cleansing devices. Or bring back corn cobs. Better Ms. Crow should consider, as has been suggested elsewhere, curtailing the use of her private aircraft if she wants to help save the earth.

Or she could take up another cause. I once lived in the same town she comes from. I know some of her family. They're nice people. In that town is a courthouse that, at one time and maybe it still does, had signs posted admonishing "no spitting on walls or floors."

Seriously.

In this day and age that sign is still needed? So imagine my glee when I learned that the city council of Fairview Heights, Ill., is considering an anti-spitting ordinance. They say it's to protect their police officers from people who spit on them.

Rough crowd there.

I've been to Fairview Heights. Maybe they need that. But men in other communities seem to regard spitting as a right of passage into manhood. But it seems that men who have money and a certain amount of class don't spit. At least not in public.

You don't see men in chauffer driven limos roll down their tinted windows and hork one on the street.

You don't see bankers driving their own Lexuses or lawyers in Mercedes lean out and spit. You do see bubbas in pickup trucks lean out and aim for the asphalt.

It doesn't always have anything to do with tobacco use. Some men expectorate because it seems to be expected. But it seems that the higher one goes on the social strata, the less inclined they are to spit in public.

Maybe they can afford to hire someone to do that for them. Whatever. It can't be doing the earth any good. It's unsanitary, unhealthy and it's disgusting.

Good luck to Fairview Heights. You can't legislate good sense. Otherwise, there wouldn't be people who demand the right to ride motorcycles without a helmet and cars without seat belts. And spit on the streets. Or in courthouses.

Maybe money does buy class. The rest of us can afford the toilet paper.