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Mother Nature Dumps on George
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George W. loves April. Not because the cherry blossoms are in bloom, but because April 22nd is Earth Day, which means he gets to put on some Khaki pants, a plaid shirt, some hiking-type boots—and then gets to ride on Air Force One to some national park where he can pose as Environmental Man all day long.
But this year, Mother Nature (damn her) messed up George's day. He was fully outfitted and had been flown out to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, where a horde of TV cameras, photographers, and reporters were going to record him working with a gaggle of volunteers to help restore a trail in the park. George loves being depicted as a regular worker guy, and Karl Rove had carefully screened the volunteers so no pesky Democrats or Sierra Club kooks would interrupt his scripted moment with some nasty remark (you know, like pointing out that George has broken his promise to eliminate the $4 billion backlog on repairing our deteriorating park system, and instead has actually increased the back log to $5 billion).
It was to be a swell day—but Mother Nature (damn her, again) whipped up a thunderstorm, and poor George had to give his environmental talk inside a cold, dank hanger at the airport, speaking to his own aides and some military personnel. This made him a bit grumpy in his brief talk: "In the park, had I been there, I would have reminded people today is Earth Day, a day in which we recommit ourselves to being good stewards of the land."
Then George flew back to Washington to continue pushing for policies allowing oil drillers, clear-cutters, and strip-miners to plunder our national parks and pollute our environment. But he did make one sensible suggestion while in the park—he encouraged Americans to save our environment through volunteer action.
I agree. Please volunteer with your local Sierra Club or other grassroots environmental group to defeat George's corporate assault on Mother Earth.
Jim Hightower is the best-selling author of Let's Stop Beating Around the Bush, from Viking Press. For more information, visit jimhightower.com.
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