These are ‘environmentalists’?
Commentary
by PAT MURPHY
The nearly
20,000 followers of the Rainbow Family expected at Bear Valley Creek in
Boise National Forest this holiday dare call themselves environmentalists.
What’ll
they call themselves after trampling all over the Shoshone Indian Tribe’s
sacred ground, threatening salmon and trout spawning grounds, and probably
leaving a counterculture mess for others to clean up?
Suggested
site for next year’s Rainbow Family camp out: Death Valley in July.
•
While on
the subject of gall:
The mentor
to conservative political thinking, radio’s bombastic Rush Limbaugh, is
in a snit.
He’s
upset with the American Medical Association for opposing the Boy Scouts
ban on gay members, and on top of that in an uproar about Republican Sen.
John McCain’s support of the Democrat patients bill of rights.
The AMA,
Limbaugh storms, is playing "politics" on an issue he complains
has nothing to do with health care.
Well, now.
. .
Limbaugh
seems to have forgotten the turnabout of Republicans who once railed
against entertainers and clergymen getting involved in politics because,
they said, it was none of their business.
But when
actor George Murphy became a U.S. senator, actor Ronald Reagan became
President, TV star Sonny Bono a congressman, actor Charlton Heston head of
the National Rifle Association, and the Rev. Pat Robertson founded the
Republican-leaning Christian Coalition ¾ all of them Republicans! ¾
suddenly it was dandy for entertainers and clergymen to be in politics.
So, with
other professions (including pompous radio commentators) involved in
politics and social issues, why not physicians, who devote more time to
the well being of more Americans than any other group?
As for
McCain, Limbaugh performed a searing on-air imitation of a growling,
narcissistic McCain, mocking him as craving attention and thus willing to
cozy up to the likes of the liberal devil incarnate, Sen. Ted Kennedy.
How
laughable. As America’s reigning egocentric, self-adoring media ham who
calls himself "a gift from God," talk about a limelight hog.
•
Quote of
the Week: "I’m trying to recruit Republicans (in Blaine County)
with a fairly high environmental ethic." — Maurice Charlat,
Ketchum city councilman and Blaine County GOP chairman.
How
refreshing. A pity the Republican Party’s pick for President of the
United States doesn’t have "a fairly high environmental
ethic."
•
Months ago,
Scott Parker blistered me in a Letter to the Editor of the Express for a
column I wrote beseeching him to launch a radio station with music that
doesn’t torture listeners like his stations KECH and KSKI.
Well,
Parker has done it. Here’s a tip of the hat.
His new
station at KYZK (FM 107.5) features soothing oldies that are ageless ¾
the big bands with big sections of brass and strings, the big singers,
songs that endure for generations, many from the age of the bobby soxers,
movie sound tracks.
Sure, it’s
the stuff that appeals to the over-50 generations, who danced
cheek-to-cheek to it, listened while parked in a lover’s lane.
Some
younger people like music that sounds like a jackhammer digging up a
concrete sidewalk; others prefer it softer and gentler.