It is as disturbing a bit of news as we've heard in some time: The anti-smoking fascism that's already sweeping through the United States and Canada has now spread to Europe. Payback, we suppose, for sending us their mad cow disease.

Still, seeing Irish pubs and French cafés being forcibly converted into non-smoking zones is as troubling to one's soul as being served a tofu bratwurst (more on that below).

Even the Italians and Spanish are getting into the health fascism act.

It's all enough to make one look a little longingly at the otherwise repressive Muslim nations for a little freedom. Whatever else Cairo and Beirut, Damascus and Ankara may lack in civil liberties, a person is still able to light up a cancer stick without being pummeled by wild-eyed do-gooders ...

Confounding us still

While alive, the late Strom Thurmond was always a bit of an anomaly – a man who never repudiated his segregationist past, yet still moved beyond it to embrace support for civil rights. And if he did, however grudgingly, move past his own racism in public life, his passing last spring was hardly a loss for the nation.

And yet ol' Strom still had one more surprise up his sleeve, ready to deal to us from the grave: It turns out that he fathered a daughter out of wedlock more than 70 years ago.

A mixed-race daughter.

If that wasn't surprising enough, then perhaps this was: Thurmond never denied his responsibility to his daughter, never denied his own kin.

Which is, of course, the normal human reaction – to accept and love your children.

But plenty of white men in the Deep South have fathered bastard children with black women only to deny them after.

For that matter, plenty of men of all ethnicity today father children only to abandon them.

Perhaps that's what most discomfiting about Thurmond's imperfect relationship with his daughter: He was father to a black child even while proposing segregationist policies and laws – and yet despite that unfathomable, unforgivable behavior he still did better by her than many black men do by their children today. He sent her substantial amounts of money, visited her and her children, and basically treated her no differently than he might have an out-of-wedlock white child that could conceivably cause him political troubles.

While the politicians and sociologists make hay out of this revelation, here at Turbula we think the main lesson is this: The only sure thing about human beings is every time you think you have one pigeonholed, they up and surprise you.

Just plain wrong

There are still certain aspects of life that are holy, or ought to be. Some things that just shouldn't be desecrated, no matter your beliefs or politics.

Bratwurst would be among them.

And so it was with dismay and revulsion that we read of an anti-inauguration street festival in Santa Cruz – hold to protest the election of Arnold Schwarzenneger as Californian governor – that was serving tofu bratwurst.

The entire concept of tofu bratwurst is simply beyond the comprehension of our meager little brains. If you don't like meat – and many in Turbula Nation don't – then don't eat it. But to try to fake the meatiest of all meat products, to try to convince yourself that this healthy but bland concoction is really a greasy chunk of sausage, that the juices drigging down your chin aren't made from olive oil, is utterly baffling.

Let's try to keep this little cultural crime confined to Santa Cruz ...

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