Just as taxes helped cut the use of cigarettes, taxes could help cut the public's indulgence in high-calorie, giant drinks.
Cranach was already friends with Luther in 1517, when the Reformer nailed — or perhaps didn't; the tale is disputed — his Ninety-Five Theses on the door of the Castle Church of Wittenberg, denouncing a public sale of indulgences, by which purchasers could shorten their time in Purgatory, to finance the renovation of St. Peter's in Rome.
Just 15 years later, in 1888, a group of frustrated veterans gathered to condemn, by proclamation, "indulgence in public sports, pastimes, and all amusements on Memorial Day".
At midday Tuesday, the M50, which travels west on 49th Street, was filled with people treating themselves to a small summer indulgence, the public transit equivalent of an ice cream cone.
The public began believing the indulgences guaranteed salvation.
If so many opening nights tend, if not to pander, at least to giggle excessively, the Cleveland ignored public relations strategies, abjuring instant indulgence in favor of a deeply serious German program.
It is not only the crude blustering of the Trump campaign that has poisoned public discourse but the liberals' indulgence of the marginal and the whimsical, the habit of letting lies pass, of ignoring the living truth in favor of grovelling and meaningless apologies to the dead.
And an adoring public makes allowances for the indulgences of the adored.
It began as criticism of personal indulgences, such renaming public institutions after his new wife and daughter, at the same time as rumors began of complicity with organized crime in the violence-wracked state.
