Ananias Ziegler, media relations director for the Committee That Really Runs America, wanted to make sure I was “getting the right spin on those tarballs.”
“What’s to spin about tarballs?” I asked. “I work with them all the time. Tarballs are collections of files — it’s how Linux software is distributed and it’s how you do backups. The ‘tar’ comes from ‘tape archive,’ except it’s usually not on tape.”
Ziegler snorted. “Cool it with the geek stuff. And while we’re at it, why don’t you get into the 21st century and use an iPad?”
“Because I’m neither hip enough nor rich enough to use anything from Apple,” I explained. “Now, what about your tarballs?”
“You mean President Obama’s tarballs down in the Gulf of Mexico?” Ziegler responded.
In Colorado, I said, “we should build big reservoirs on Eastern Slope rivers at the state lines.”
Ziegler sounded perplexed, so I explained.
“Colorado works very hard to meet its water obligations to downstream states,” I pointed out. “We even move a lot of water from the Western Slope to the east. And what have they done with the precious water that flows out in the North and South Platte, the Republican, the Arkansas and the Rio Grande? They let it flow into the Gulf of Mexico where it gets fouled with crude oil and chemical dispersants. If they can’t take any better care of it, we shouldn’t let them have it.”
Ziegler harrumphed. “Quit being so parochial and think bigger than your remote chunk of fly-over territory. Whose fault is this environmental catastrophe?”
“Yours and mine,” I responded. “I buy gasoline and plastics and other stuff made from petroleum, and so do you. If we didn’t buy it, nobody would drill for it, and we wouldn’t have these problems. We wouldn’t be fighting in Iraq, either.”
Ziegler sounded exasperated. “Doesn’t it bother you that President Obama has appeared so cool and detached about this?”
“Well, sure, I’d enjoy a passionate Huey Long-style rant about Big Oil’s greed-driven callous disregard for the shrimpers and fishermen, the ma-and-pa tourist enterprises on the Gulf coast, with some gruesome descriptions of the sufferings of birds and sea turtles enveloped in toxic slime. But that’s not Obama’s style.”
“Finally, you’re getting it,” Ziegler said. “See how this is all Obama’s fault? He wasn’t prepared when the Deepwater Horizon blew up on April 22 and the oil started pouring two days later.”
I conceded that Ziegler was right about that. “But suppose he’d anticipated that such a catastrophe could happen, and imposed a moratorium on deep-water drilling until better recovery means could be developed. Then you and your ‘drill baby drill’ crowd would have crucified him for dithering when America desperately needed to develop more domestic energy.”
“But the rig didn’t start drilling until last October,” Ziegler said. “So if he had imposed the moratorium when he was sworn in, the Gulf would be fine.”
“For awhile, perhaps,” I conceded. “But then you’d have been after him for over-regulation and meddling with private enterprise. It seems to me that no matter what he did or didn’t do, you’d find a way to make this catastrophe his fault.”
“Precisely,” Ziegler replied.
Ed Quillen (ekquillen@gmail.com) of Salida is a regular contributor to The Denver Post.
