At the end of last year, a town called Friendship Heights, in Maryland"s Montgomery County, approved America"s (and thus the world"s) strictest tobacco policy. Town officers courageously banned smoking on all public property, including streets, pavements and public squares. "It"s a public health issue", said the mayor, Alfred Muller, who is also a doctor. "We don"t have the right to outlaw tobacco, but we"re doing what we can within our rights". This newspaper has expressed disgruntlement with the element of intolerance that is increasingly manifesting itself within America"s anti-tobacco movement. It must be said, however, that brave Friendship Heights has discovered an approach that liberals can embrace. Private property is its owners" sanctuary, but the public rules in public spaces. Undeniably, the streets belong to the government; what happens in them, therefore, is the government"s business. On this worthy principle, smoking should be merely the beginning. For example, it is clear that the consumption of fatty foods contributes to heart disease, strokes and other deadly disease. Besides, eating junk makes you fat and ugly. What people do at home is their own affair, but why allows them to abuse the public streets for this gluttony America"s pavements and boardwalks are overridden with persons, many of them overweight, who amble along licking ice cream or gobbling chips. In many cities, hot dogs are spread, quite openly, on the pavement itself. All this should be stopped. Not just in Friendship Heights but in other enlightened districts, it should be illegal to eat anything but low-fat foods in public zones. Because Americans consume too little by way of fruits and vegetables, in time (it is best to move slowly, because people"s rights must be respected) streets should become strictly vegetarian. More can be done. Shrieking newspaper headlines create stress for those who may not wish to view them. People who want to buy and read papers should therefore be required to do so in private. America has long and justly sought to prevent the entanglement of religion with public life. What people do in church or at home is their business. However, praying, sermonizing or wearing religious garb in the streets surely compromises the requirement that the public will not be dragooned into supporting religion. There is the environment to consider, as well. That people exhale carbon dioxide in public places, thus contributing to global warming, is probably inevitable, and America"s politicians would be wise to permit it. But methane, too, is a greenhouse gas, and an odiferous one. Its emission in public places, where it can neither be avoided nor filtered, seems an imposition on both planetary hygiene and human comfort. Breakers of wind, surely, can be required to wait until they can answer their needs in private; and prosecuted when they fail. Fame, then, to Friendship Heights. Other towns should take note. If they intend to fulfill their responsibilities to the health and welfare of citizens, to public order, and above all to the public streets and parks whose rights the authorities are sworn to uphold, then the way ahead is clear. Alfred Muller"s words imply______.
A. laws do a lot for public health
B. he can"t make laws about the tobacco
C. what he has done is benefiting the people
D. the mayor"s approval is the important factor in making laws
Over the years, as the musical "Rent" has reached milestone after milestone—playing around the world in more than 200 productions from Boise to Little Rock to Reykjavik—the thousands of people who have been affected by this vibrant, gritty and compassionate work may well wonder what its creator, Jonathan Larson, would have thought of it all. Another milestone came on Monday night. The original Broadway production of "Rent" opened at the Nederlander Theater l0 years ago this Saturday. That production, directed by Michael Greif, was an almost-intact transfer of the initial production at the New York Theater Workshop, which had opened three months earlier. To celebrate the anniversary the original cast members reassembled, rehearsed for two days and performed the show in a semi-staged version at the Nederlander on Monday. The event was a benefit for the New York Theater Workshop, for Friends in Deed (a support organization that gave comfort to several of Mr. Larson"s friends dealing with H.I.V. infections), and for the Jonathan Larson Performing Arts Foundation, which was set up by his family after the enormous success of "Rent". Before the performance, the co-chairmen of the benefit told the star-studded audience that more than $2 million" had been raised. Also addressing the crowd were Senator Charles E. Schumer and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who praised "Rent" as a timeless work exemplifying "culture, community and creativity", in the mayor"s words, and saluted the show"s vast contributions to New York"s theatrical life. Once again you could only think, "Would Jonathan ever have imagined all this" Mr. Larson, who wrote the music, lyrics and books for his stage works, struggled for more than 10 years to get a producer to take a shot at one of his shows. Now he was being posthumously thanked for giving Broadway a creative and economic boost. "Rent" is the seventh longest running show in Broadway history. I count myself among those who were personally affected by Mr. Larson"s work. Because of the inadvertent role I played in the last hours of his life. In 1996 an editor at The Times tipped me off to the opening of a rock musical, inspired by. "La Boehme", which transplanted Puccini"s struggling bohemians from Paris in the 1830"s to the "East Village in 1990"s. So on Jan. 24 I went to the New York Theater Workshop m see the dress rehearsal of "Rent", which was scheduled to open in February. That performance was pretty ragged, with technical glitches and a misbehaving sound system. But I was swept away by the sophistication and exuberance of Mr. Larson"s music and the mix of tenderness and cleverness in his lyrics. After the show Mr. Larson and I sat down for an interview in the tiny ticket booth of the theater, the only quiet space we could find amid the post-rehearsal confusion. For almost an hour, this sad-eyed and boyish, creator talked about his approach to songwriting, his determination to bring the American musical tradition to the MTV generation, and about friends snuggling with H.I.V. infection who had inspired the show. The fact that the original production was an almost-intact transfer of the initial production at the New York Theater Workshop implies that______.
A. Rent was a classical work
B. Michael Greif was a conservative director
C. Rent was conservative
D. people were nostalgic