Beethoven's Fifth with a fifth of rum

Now here's a different approach to a vexing problem. The Sarasota City Commission is pondering blasting classical music into a city park to drive out the homeless. That ought to do it. To really teach them a lesson, perhaps the commissioners could force-feed the homeless champagne and petit fours to the strains of Mozart.

To be fair, efforts to push the homeless out of parks and subways by annoying them with Bach, Wagner and Strauss have claimed some success in Seattle and London. But is it also possible the homeless simply preferred Zubin Mehta's version of Bolero over Leonard Bernstein's?

Indeed, using Liszt as a weapon against the homeless assumes they are culturally bankrupt. It is patronizing, but then perhaps the Florida Orchestra should schedule a few concerts in St. Petersburg's Williams Park and see what happens.

There are more auditory lethal options for cities to use to clear out the homeless — not to mention taxpayers. Anything by Yoko Ono comes to mind. Neil Diamond's Sweet Caroline is a guaranteed street cleaner (except in Boston's Fenway Park, of course). And could you really go wrong with amateur musicians attempting Stairway to Heaven?

Maybe Sarasota is on to something. Maybe instead of prudently investing in Pinellas Hope, or creating a similar shelter in Hillsborough, or calling on residents to donate to charitable organizations, local governments could just turn on the boom boxes and break out the classical CDs. Beethoven would roll over.