Smokey and the Bandit, foiled

DEAR EDITOR:

Well, House Bill 879 went and did it in 2020: home delivery of liquor is legal in Georgia. The debate around this bill focused on morality, religion, and addiction, as was proper. It also garnered much input from opponents in the liquor wholesale and distribution business.

The bill as enacted is quite limited and does not yet allow unrestricted delivery of booze by mail. But that is the inevitable outcome. I want to ask the question that everyone forgot to ask in the run-up to passage of HB 879: How, in a world of mail-order booze, will we explain Smokey and the Bandit to our grandchildren?

The movie already makes it hard to tell the good guys from the bad guys, but if you focus on job function it’s possible: law enforcement are, regrettably, morons; but they are the good guys, and the easygoing scalawags are the bad guys. Frog (winsome Sally Field long before the Boniva ads) is a bad gal, an accessory to interstate transport of illegal booze.

Imagine that same story under a regime of legal delivery of booze by mail, and explaining to your descendants that no, the sheriff is not trying to stop the U.S. Mail from completing its appointed rounds, Snowman is not the postman, and there’s a good reason for Bandit and Frog to drive around and jump that car over every creek and gully in sight (actually, that’s hard to explain no matter what is legal or illegal at any given moment).