I find it curious that so many folks whose social calendars include hazardous rock-climbing trips, hikes across mountainous terrain and full marathons seem to melt under the threat of a double-digit snow day.
I’m not trying to diminish the severity of last week’s blizzard. We had tons of the white stuff. Unfortunate travelers were stuck at the airport and drivers on highways. It was a major, sometimes crippling, inconvenience for hundreds of thousands of people.
And it was terribly inconvenient for Denverites like my wife, who waded into the waist-high snow to shovel us out. She’s a trouper, though.
But don’t worry, honey, as soon as the kids are old enough to get their adorable little fingers around that shovel, we’ll laugh about all this snow.
In the end, the blizzard of ’06 became another overblown faux tragedy to bellyache about. It was, I imagine, exactly what Miami Beach would sound like if it snowed in Florida: complaining about the weather raised to an art form.
The catastrophe was so terrifying, apparently, that someone accidentally knocked Mayor John Hickenlooper’s halo off his head.
Attacking politicians is my bread and butter. And Hickenlooper deserves plenty of scorn for the, you know, insane/crazy/nutty stuff he said during the storm. (The residential roads were most definitely not plowed.)
In his defense, perhaps the mayor contracted cabin fever in that underground emergency NORAD-like bunker war room he was transmitting television signals from.
The important thing is we know he cares. You saw him out there kicking the snow on Denver side streets, getting an on-the-ground read of the situation.
That’s called leading.
Not so, said City Councilwoman Rosemary Rodriguez. She claimed that Hick sees everything through rose-colored glasses. That’s not what leaders do. Hick, she says, “looks at snow and disaster and sees cocoa and sledding.” (Sarcastic italics are mine.)
A “disaster”?
New Orleans + hurricane = disaster.
Two feet of snow + plows a day or two late = cocoa and sledding.
Now, if only for entertainment purposes, I fully appreciate the fact that someone is actually criticizing the mayor in public. All that mutual respect and love around City Hall was starting to resemble a dinner theater production of “Hair.”
But while there are plenty of reasons to carp at Hick, the fact that he isn’t panic- stricken every time we’re hit with an act of Mother Nature isn’t one of them.
Sure, a reality-based speech would have been more appropriate: “Fellow citizens, I know this stinks. I can’t even get around on the Vespa. And kids, Santa Claus will not be coming this year – unless you get out immediately and shovel until your red mittens are in tatters.”
Or as letter writer Glenn Goodwin asked Denver Post readers the other day, why not ignore the city? “Why do we have to wait for government? We need to turn off the TV, get up from the couch, quit calling the public works department and take our own action.”
Action for some seems to mean crying about plows. Or spending $15 million to $20 million more on machinery that will sit around for 364 days a year waiting for another winter blizzard.
There are, of course, plenty of good ideas floating around: Hire local contractors when we need them to plow; use detachable plows for other city trucks. And with plenty of smart people in this city, surely we can come up with a plan.
Not that any plan would have mattered to the folks stuck in the airport or on the highway. More plows would not have helped. Nor would a more pessimistic message from the mayor.
And frankly, the last thing I expected in Colorado was to see politicians panicking over snow. It just sends a really weird message to tourists.
(Disclaimer: If another 2 feet of snow is dumped on us today, I take back everything I wrote. Curl up in horror and wait for reinforcements.)
David Harsanyi’s column appears Monday and Thursday. He can be reached at 303-954-1255 or dharsanyi@denverpost.com.
