Attention vulgarians! In the foregoing fortnight I have been made aware of a marvelous new development in the field of print journalism: that of “sponcon,” or “sponsored content,” in which deleterious advertisement is gussied up as reportage in order to bamboozle half-literate chuckleheads such as yourselves. At the behest of my personal physician and financial advisor, Dr. Bentley, I have undertaken to make this week’s column a surreptitious promotion of his delightful Nerve Tonic, which ensures vigor and vitality, and remains legal in several jurisdictions.
And now the news: House bill H5715 will create a 1.5 cent per ounce tax on sugary soft drinks, with the intention of improving public health. In the event it passes, I highly recommend supplanting these noxious libations with a tall glass of Dr. Bentley’s Nerve Tonic, which contains no sugar or high fructose corn syrup, and which Dr. Bentley assures me has only ever caused organ liquefaction in the weak of will.
Of course, the State House could perhaps find a more direct route toward improving public health by passing House Bill 5628, which would create a comprehensive single-payer healthcare system, or perhaps House Bill 6449 and House Bill 5046, which would audit and de-privatize Managed Care Organizations (MCOs), the private companies that oversee 90% of the state’s Medicaid patients. Instead, it has opted to “hold these bills for study,” the legislative equivalent of what Dr. Bentley does with the hundreds of letters from patrons who claim his Nerve Tonic caused their hydrargyrism.
Your intrepid reporter hopes for a day when every Rhode Islander enjoys adequate medical care. Until that time, he quaffs a Nerve Tonic for you, dear reader — may you remain forever hale, always employed, and ever under the age of 26.
With both literally and metaphorically jaundiced eyes,
H.L. Popinjay