Why You Can't Buy Girl Scout Cookies Online

The most bafflingly tasteless headline I've seen in some time is on a blog item published Tuesday by the San Francisco Chronicle. "Lexus v. Girl Scouts: Lexus Wins," is about a guy who accidentally plowed into a group of Scouts selling cookies, injuring several of them.

For some reason, this item was posted on SFGate.com's environmental blog, the Thin Green Line, written by Cameron Scott. The San Jose Mercury News has published a version of the story for adults.

Five people were hospitalized, and one girl and her mother are in serious condition.

Selling Girl Scout Cookies, like anything else done out in the world, can be dangerous. But apparently, the people at Scout headquarters think that the Internet is even more dangerous. For that reason, the organization has banned online sales of the evilly tempting perennial treats.

Girl Scouts of the USA calls its cookie sales "the leading entrepreneurial program for girls" but puts a limit on just how entrepreneurial girls are allowed to be.

A recent case involves one Wild Freeborn, 8, of North Carolina, who posted a YouTube video hawking her Thin Mints, Tagalongs, and other varieties of what is, next to bacon, the greatest foodstuff ever created.

The video didn't sit well with some local parents, including Matthew Markie, a parent who Newsweek's Kurt Soller describes without comment as being "involved in Girl Scouts even though his three daughters are well into their 20s."

The parents have a point. Allowing online cookie sales puts kids without a computer at a disadvantage. Still, there can't be many such Scouts, so it shouldn't be an insurmountable problem for the organization. Soller reports on some possible solutions.

But that's not even the group's main concern, supposedly. On its Web site, it says Internet sales are banned because "[t]he safety of our girls is always our chief concern."  Also, "Girl Scout Cookie activities are designed to be face-to-face learning experiences for the girls."

Ultimately, though, even Wild Freeborn meets her customers, all of them local, when she delivers the goods. Nonetheless, she was ordered to yank her YouTube video.

Soller calls it "losing a teaching moment." But given the organization's apparent lack of savvy (a "CyberGirl Scout" badge can be earned, in part, by sending an e-mail), the "leading" program for our future entrepreneurs won't be teaching them much about e-commerce any time soon. Michelle Tompkins, a spokewoman for Girl Scouts, told Soller that the organization "is not shunning the Internet ... though we still have to figure out how to do this."