The Editorial Board, The Miami Herald

April 22, 2009

The Editorial Board
The Miami Herald
One Herald Plaza
Miami, Florida 33132-1693

RE: Congratulations!

Sirs,

So intent was I to spread my expanding carbon footprint all around South Florida on this anniversary of Earth Day – Remember that it started when Global Cooling was the threat du jour and the consensus of science was that it was a race between starving to death or freezing to death. Remember? – that I let my main business suffer.

I own an awards company. There are three laurels. Each one is non-gender specific. While I don’t have quotas I do have goals. In the category of HORSE’S ASS OFF THE WEEK I consider it a sign of maturity as a secular nation that African Americans can be included without having a scarlet R branded on your cheek. POMPOUS FART OF THE MONTH is an award of a different color. The one irreducible prerequisite is that the winner possesses Homeric amounts of non-malodorous fecal matter. If you don’t understand what that is send a SASE. SMARMY BASTARD OF THE YEAR, the mother of all awards, the Granddaddy of them All, is given out the old fashioned way. You have to earn it.

Right after dawn I drove to west Broward in hope of spotting a black bear. How lucky can we be to have an almost 200 pound omnivore gamboling through gated communities? I wanted to find out why Global Warming is bad for polar bears but good for Black Bears. The jury is still out on Lucky Pierre, my favorite Brown Bear. As to cute and cuddly Pandas and the painfully shy Sumatran Red Bears, I just don’t know. I know it will be the kiss of death for them if WAL*MART starts to auction them off.

I drove my gas guzzling SUV, unmindful of the delicate ecosystems I was disrupting, uncaring of the connected Rain Forest destruction, just another aging White man looking to exploit 3rd Worlders, all over the Everglades trying to bitch slap Mother Nature when I realized that duty was calling.

EARTH DAY MUST BE CELEBRATED!

I stopped at Publix on the way home. I try to go to as many different ones as I can. I go straight to the tremendous produce section where I seek out the manager. I try to stand as close to the sign promoting their “Organic Fruit and Vegetables”. I tell him that as a victim of life’s circumstances I need to save money so could you please tell me where the inorganic fruit and vegetables are. I tell them that I am particularly interested in


long strand polymers. I will buy all of them if they haven’t fully succumbed to the “noble rot”. Just another blank stare. I should be used to them by now.

When I got back I could not even raise a glass to toast her or it or whatever because of your lead editorial titled Drilling off Florida Coast Still a Bad Idea. You have a picture of what appears to be a drilling and a production rig superimposed on a map of the Gulf of Mexico. It stretches from western Florida to Texas and Mexico.

You talk about the danger to tourism and tourism. If you look at your map you can see the outline of Padre Island. The last time I was there tourism and fishing abounded. Why no concern for them? On the right hand side of your picture you have conveniently redacted Cuba. I mention that because drilling is supposed to begin off the coast of Cuba in June. Who will address the drilling risk there? The United States Navy?

You conclude by saying that there may not be any oil and gas there. Why drill, you ask. The answers should be obvious.

#1 – American oil companies want to spend their own money to find out. There is no greater stimulus program. The government now runs the automobile business. If you put the government in charge of the beach in 2 years they would be importing sand. President Obama said that the United States government now stands behind your GM warranty. Why is that a scary sentence? Would it be better if the Post Office ran all the drilling programs?

#2 – The major premise of your editorial, indeed the major premise of the absurd environmental movement, is that modern civilization is bad. Somehow we would be better off if we hand plowed the fields and gathered free range nuts, berries, and fruits. I read your editorial and ask if the Luddites have taken over. Bovine borborygomy and porcine eructations seem to be the new science. You, in typical modern American Liberal fashion, confuse feelings with ideas. There is a difference.

The consequences of your feelings are simple:

#1 – It’s OK to buy oil from a thug like Chavez. It’s OK to buy oil from a slave trading nation like Sudan. It’s OK to support the really nice guys who run Nigeria. It’s OK to acquiesce in the coming annihilation of Israel by buying oil from Iran. It’s OK to buy oil from our buddies in Russia. Concern for the rutting habits of ptarmigan and reindeer stop us from drilling in ANWR In fact, any suggestion of increasing domestic production is snarled at.

#2 – May I suggest, as I have been suggesting since 1997, that the Logical conclusion of your opposition to offshore drilling is simple? You must turn off your air conditioning this summer.

Your circulation will increase, your employees will rally around you, you will be in the forefront of the Back to Nature movement, you will be smiled on by the ghosts of charlatan Rachel Carson and Nazi Frogman Jacques Cousteau, and you will become one of the really, really good guys.

After that catches on your campaign against plastic, all and everything plastic, should be easy.

BONG!

That’s a bell that I have attached to one of my manatee pots. It tells me when I caught one. I get a Hell of a return for one head of lettuce that Publix was going to throw away.

Would you like some steaks?

You can use them to celebrate your award. I hereby name you

HORSE’S ASS OF THE WEEK