OCR Text |
Show O" Brian Gray "" Sen. Orrin Hatch can rest at ease. He's lost Three weeks ago it appeared that Seiu-Hatch's defense of white collar criminals Was a shoo-in for the coveted Dumb Quote of the Year Award. Within two hours of this newspaper's publication, Cyclops received numerous nu-merous telephone calls from readers overjoyed by Onin's success. Maybe he won't win a Supreme Court seat, they said; but at least he'll win the Dumb Quote of the Year Award. . Sorry, Orrin...Close but no cigar...Close only counts in horseshoes.You were beat out by another well-publicized Utah mover and shaker ' AND THE WINNER IS: Joy Beech, the executive director of Families Alert, for her plundering of Utah's tourism industry at the expense of taxpayers tax-payers and good, old-fashioned common sense. This year's winning Dumb Quote occurred (naturally) at the Utah Legislature Legis-lature where the House Transportation and Public Safety Committee was considering a provision to allow passengers on Wendover-bound tour buses to enjoy a cocktail. It was not a pro-drinking or anti-drinking bill. Rather, it was a safety provision, taking the problem drinker from behind the wheel of a car and placing him in a bus seat where the only harm is to his own liver. Getting a potential drunk driver off the road was one positive aspect, said tourism spokesmen. But another positive aspect, they said, related to tourism. The bill would decrease the state's "starchy" image. A simple way to slice Utah's taxes is to allow rich tourists to dump money in our cash registers. Why not let the free-spending California skier pay our bills? Almost everyone agreed. But not Joy Beech, the matron of much-to-do-about-nothing. The bill, she said, is "a step away jrom Mormon stan- dards." Showing her ignorance of the tourism industry she further said. "People coming to see Temple Square don't expect liquor." Then, in her award-winning Dumb Quote diatribe, she offered the name of the well-known legal expert, Ted Bundy. "One Ted Bundy is enough!" she shouted. I can't see the connection between Ted Bundy and a "Fun Bus" to Wendover. Monsters tend to lurk in back alleys, not pop corks in chartered Greyhounds. Of course, Ted Bundy drank alcohol. So do Ronald Reagan and George Bush-and some 80 percent of the U.S. population. Beech's comment about Mormon standards and Temple Square reflects total ignorance of Utah's tourism plight Tourists don't travel to destinations des-tinations to bask in religious standards. Atlanta has a booming tourist in-dustry-but no one has ever traveled there in order to become a practicing Baptist Likewise, no tourist on record has ever flown to Chicago to immerse im-merse himself in Catholicism (although some travelers have made the sign of the cross when descending into O'Hare Airport) Tourists visit sites to "get away' ' and see new places. They visit Utah to see mountains and canyons, ski Utah's bountiful, snow, and attend tax-deductible tax-deductible conventions. As an internationally-recognized site, they also visit Temple Square-but they don't visit to change their lifestyle. If they . truly wished to change their lifestyle, they'd skip Utah, Chicago and At-lanta At-lanta and book reservations at the Amish Hilton. r-. Part of this tourism is alcohol. One day after Beech fumed at the Legislature, Legisla-ture, the Cache-Rich Tourist Council noted that denying Sherwood Hills Resort a liquor license would result in a loss of most out-of-state bookings.' "We've been working hard to make this area friendly to tourists and the success so far has been overwhelming," said the Cache Chamber of Commerce. Com-merce. "But we'll lose it all because most out-of-state people want to go where there is a liquor license." Most Mormons resent Beech's concept that the Utah Legislature should only consider Mormon standards. Non-Mormons, of course, are outraged. At a time when Mormon officials have called on members to ' 'reach out' ' to visitors, Joy Beech is attempting to erect a barbed wire fence at our borders. bor-ders. ' Thankfully, the House committee didn't take her seriously, voting 1 1-3 to approve the "Fun Bus" provision. But Cyclops takes her seriously serious-ly ...Seriously enough to bestow upon her the Dumb Quote of the Year Award. It wasn'jteyen close! J.))!! .. . j ,,,, ; . . 'r l ,!u |