Joe Queenan always has been one of my favorite satirists, and today’s piece on bailing out luxury skyboxes does not disappoint. After all, what would our great cities be without the professional sports teams that represent them? (At least for a while, before they move and stink up the joint somewhere else.)

He writes:

Proponents of the moral-hazard theory will argue that if you bail out the Orioles, you will then have to bail out the Pirates, and if you bail out the Pirates you will soon have no alternative but to bail out the Memphis Grizzlies and the Nashville Predators. Admittedly, it is terribly unfair that hard-working citizens should find themselves in a situation where the only way they can ensure the survival of their society is to pony up millions of dollars so the Commerce Department can lease a couple dozen skyboxes in Columbus, Ohio. But without the emotional uplift provided to the American people by the ministrations of the Columbus Blue Jackets, the Arizona Diamondbacks, and yes, even the Utah Jazz, this society could descend into a maelstrom of depression from which it never re-emerges.

The only positive element in this grim scenario is that a federal skybox bailout will have a salutary effect on luxury-box culture. Luxury boxes are basically clubhouses where fat cats who have no interest in the games themselves try to get their clients hammered so they can rope them into bad real-estate deals in Boca Raton.

A federal luxury box bailout would change all that. The folks who run the Department of Education are not hard drinkers. Employees of the Fish and Wildlife Service do not party hearty. And nobody has to worry about guests getting bombed out of their skulls while watching a football game from their perch in the IRS Skybox. Nor need taxpayers worry about getting stuck with the bill for the refreshments. In the IRS Skybox, if you want something to eat, you’d better bring along a brown bag.

The logic is perfect and I believe Queenan has captured the present spirit of the age.

By the way, if you are a Queenan fan, here is a portion of his article on “the worst movie ever made,” which Queenan says is “Heaven’s Gate,” a movie I actually have watched, compliments of my good friend, John Sophocleus, who I am sure will thoroughly enjoy Queenan’s piece:

I am firmly in the camp that believes that Heaven’s Gate is the worst movie ever made. For my money, none of these other films can hold a candle to Michael Cimino’s 1980 apocalyptic disaster. This is a movie that destroyed the director’s career. This is a movie that lost so much money it literally drove a major American studio out of business. This is a movie about Harvard-educated gunslingers who face off against eastern European sodbusters in an epic struggle for the soul of America. This is a movie that stars Isabelle Huppert as a shotgun-toting cowgirl. This is a movie in which Jeff Bridges pukes while mounted on roller skates. This is a movie that has five minutes of uninterrupted fiddle-playing by a fiddler who is also mounted on roller skates. This is a movie that defies belief.

A friend of mine, now deceased, was working for the public relations company handling Heaven’s Gate when it was released. He told me that when the 220-minute extravaganza debuted at the Toronto film festival, the reaction was so thermonuclear that the stars and the film-maker had to immediately be flown back to Hollywood, perhaps out of fear for their lives. No one at the studio wanted to go out and greet them upon their return; no one wanted to be seen in that particular hearse. My friend eventually agreed to man the limo that would meet the children of the damned on the airport tarmac and whisk them to safety, but only provided he was given free use of the vehicle for the next three days. After he dropped off the halt and the lame at suitable safe houses and hiding places, he went to Mexico for the weekend. Nothing like this ever happened when Showgirls or Gigli or Ishtar or Xanadu or Glitter or Cleopatra were released. Nothing like this happened when The Hottie and the Nottie dropped dead the day it was released. Heaven’s Gate was so bad that people literally had to be bribed to go meet the survivors. Proving that, in living memory, giants of bad taste once ruled the earth. Giants. By comparison with the titans who brought you Heaven’s Gate, Paris Hilton is a rank amateur.