Today's Tribune column: "The bell tolls for thee, Bluto."

... in which I conceptually travel from "Animal House" to Murray Sperber, from Bob Knight to Bridges Authority nabobs, and end on Black Sunday, 1905.

BAYLOR: The bell tolls for thee, Bluto.

... I think about this inspirational passage each time a bridge toll apologist explains the rosy inevitability of a tax/toll increase to float the massive loans necessary for animating an exorbitant three-legged Bridges Project that virtually no one in metro Louisville wants. We're full circle, back to Coach Knight's controversial advice: “If rape is inevitable, relax and enjoy it.”

Sorry, but I can't.

It has been far too instructive documenting the gyrations of local elected Republicans, who either speak in code, asking us to believe that in the absence of a referendum, an involuntary toll imposed by an unelected body is a “user fee,” not a tax, or clerely have nothing coherent to say at all about their support of taxing-and-spending to finance an outdated bridges boondoggle, after they just completed campaigns stressing platforms of opposing taxing and spending to finance anything else ...