Daniel Vasquez, The Sun Sentinel

March 17, 2008

Daniel Vasquez

The Sun-Sentinel

200 East Las Olas Boulevard

Fort Lauderdale, Florida 33316

RE: Congratulations! A triumph of the human spirit! A week without gas!

Mr. Vasquez,

One of the benefits of being a curmudgeon, admittedly an erudite, engaging, and an unbelievably multi-tasking interesting curmudgeon, is that you get to give awards. Back when I lived in Area Code 201 I began giving out the following honors.

Horse’s Ass of the Week

Pompous Fart of the Month

Smarmy Bastard of the Year

Believe me when I tell you that my standards were stricter than Florida’s FCATs. All they try to do is make sure that Johnny can read, write, and add up a column of figures. I was giving the winners a shot at the Hall of Fame, a shot at immortality.

I have added some special awards for especially egregious undertakings. If I say that you are “the smartest bear in the zoo” it doesn’t mean that I am a big fan of animals. If I say an accomplishment like that is akin to being “the tallest building in Wichita, Kansas” I am damning with faint praise. Sort of like a reverse litotes.

Your article on your week long boycott of oil companies and your week long bike trips caused me to reach for a new award.

“I did it” is how you began your article about feeling good, feeling really really good, about your successful oil company boycott and your week long jaunt into aerobic exercise plus the vagaries of public transportation. “I did it” brings you perilously close to the treacherous shoals of narcissism. If you are “iron bottomed and copper sheathed” it is but a short jaunt to solipsism. “Not that I have a problem with that” but they don’t belong in a news article.

Do you think that the Sun-Sentinel should mandate that all its employees, particularly those who like to hector their readers about social responsibility, must use public transportation? How about turning off the air conditioning as Sun-Sentinel World HQ this summer? Think of all the sweat pouring off the brows of wage slave serfs as penance for the profligate use of petroleum in generations past. Focus on the amount of CO2 not released into the beleaguered atmosphere as a life preserver for drowning polar bears. This may not be good news for those really cut baby seals but, What the Hell, every war has its casualties, right? A society that can afford “Midnight Basketball” can afford vegan lessons for polar bears, can’t it?

[As an interesting aside you mention “A mother of two young children…on her way to parenting classes when we met one day on the bus”. You don’t tell us if she had her “2 young children” with her when you met. If they weren’t with her, where were they? At the risk, a risk I freely take, of violating some sensitivity guidelines don’t you think she should have taken “parenting classes” before the first of her 2 children?

You end your article by compromising your quest. “But I won’t give up my car permanently.” That’s like being almost a virgin. Saint Augustine covered it nicely when he implored the Lord, “Make me chaste Lord. Tomorrow.”

Accordingly, I hereby award you the first

ORDER OF THE INK STAINED BIKE RIDING BOOBS

In keeping with our joint concern for the environment the award will be a garland. It is organic and biodegradable.

Alas, there will be no cash with your gift. I have a gas guzzling SUV that must be fed.

The original Doctor J. covered my award and your articles when he spoke about the phenomenon of “women preaching” by comparing it to a dog walking on its hind legs. “It is not how well he does it but, rather, why does he do it all?”

PS - As one concerned with the environment do you think the United States Navy should enforce the admittedly unilateral no drilling edict in the Eastern Gulf of Mexico? How about we shell some of their Chinese manned drilling rigs? Then we can ride our bikes – like the French did in 1914 – across Alligator Alley to fight them in Naples.