Return
to Nicholas Johnson's Coralville Rain Forest Web Site
"It's a Floor Wax. It's a Dessert Topping. It's Whatever They Want it to Be"
January 21, 2006
The quote is taken from a Saturday Night Live skit from 1975 called Shimmer. [Available here and here.]
Are we old, or what?
(Hat tip: Side Notes)
Update: Johnson is right-on here with his analysis:
The rain forest's fundamental problems have been obvious for four years. So why did so many public officials and mass media continue to emphasize "the 'Wow!' and the wonderful," virtually ignoring risks and realism? A skeptical venture capitalist asks questions and is called "a smart businessperson." Why, when citizens ask the same questions about the rain forest, are they called "naysayers" who "lack vision"?One of the problems with the Rainforest having such long legs is due to the crusty Gannettoids running that monopoly corporate newspaper in Des Moines. While they occasionally put forth the slightly skeptical story on progress, most of the time they would just reiterate the talking points that were bought by David Oman and Robert Ray. These talking points would then be repeated without any critical thinking by all these brown-nosing elitists running practically every higher education institution within Iowa. They almost pulled it off, especially thanks to that weasel Chuck Grassley who, as far as we are concerned, got that $50 million on the taxpayer charge card and then changed the language from Coralville to all of Iowa solely because he is nothing but a monetized puppet of Oman and his ilk. You didn't see the Register publishing anything about that language change the way we did. Oh, God, it would totally upset their little fifedom of wink-nodding political corruption,Iowa has plenty of successful attractions throughout the state. There's no reason it can't have many more. But only if we remember the lesson of the Laser Center: "build it and they will come" only works in the movies.
PC-do-good-ism, massive tax increases on Iowa's poor, and lefty environmentalist showboating so that they can have something to brag about to their friends on the East Coast.
If the Register put half as much effort into trying to protect Iowa taxpayers and cleaning up the filthy, in-bred, political corruption that goes on as they did trying to out all the female rape victims in Iowa, this State would be a lot better off.
posted by Editor at 11:20 AM