FLASHES

Flashes, 5-18

Look Who’s Not Talking
Last week, U.S. Senator John McCain was yapping about Janet Reno and Waco to that bastion of Gotham liberalism, The New Yorker.

Which must have reporters at the Arizona Republic and Phoenix Gazette scratching their heads. The Snowy Haired Senator won’t talk to their stodgy Republican papers at all–not about the future of Medicaid, not about Indian gaming, not about nuthin’. Arizonans can, of course, still get unhealthy doses of McCain on radio talk shows and TV news, institutions which by federal law are prohibited from asking informed questions.

But McCain hasn’t been returning calls from R&G reporters since last August, when his wife, Cindy, admitted her drug addiction to selected sympathetic reporters. No R&G newsroom types were invited to her confessional; the senator’s spin-docs assigned those duties to political columnist John Kolbe, R-Gazette.

A curious thing happened on the way to Cindy’s redemption. The Republic city desk actually pursued the story. Cindy’s addiction remained in the headlines for days. Steve Benson unleashed an unflattering cartoon, and the senator and the dailies were on the outs. There were signs that relations had started thawing in late December, but then the Republic reprinted the Cindy cartoon as part of a year-end retrospective. McCain went reballistic.

McCain’s paid dissembler, Deirdre Blackwood, told The Flash she couldn’t talk because of an office emergency. She twice promised to call back, but, of course, she didn’t. (Reporters say she commonly employs this method–the feigning of urgent business–to head off inquiries.) R&G reporters grouse that their own top editors don’t seem to care if McCain snubs his nose at the state’s largest daily–and its legions of readers.

“Why doesn’t our editorial board do something about it?” is the question one R&G news hound asks rhetorically–and then quickly answers.

“Because they’re chickenshits.”

Maximizing Your Prophets
Attention, miners, ranchers, loggers, extractive industrialists and generic polluters! For the low, low price of $10, you can help the cause and get your antienvironmental dander up with an inspirational infomercial produced by People for the West!.

See and hear Governor Fife “Save the Freon” Symington! House Speaker Mark “Mark” Killian! Congressman J.D. “Michelin Man” Hayworth! Graham County Sheriff Richard “Quick-Draw” Mack!

These guys are here to reject extremism! They want you to know they have a reasoned approach! They’re not crazies!

Check out this Killian metaphor on states’ rights:
“When Moses stood before Pharoah and said, ‘Let my people go,’ he was searching for freedom. . . . We’re standing before the federal government and saying, ‘Let our people go!'”

Amen to that, brother Mark! But, hey, wait just a minute. Didn’t Moses totally pollute the Nile, turning it into blood? Isn’t that kind of hard on riparian habitats?

Oh, what the heck! Get more religion from Symington, who reminds viewers to dismiss government-funded scientific research as “scare tactics”!

And don’t forget, as Hayworth says, that radical environmentalists are in “endless pursuit to stopping progress.”

Now let’s get to work building those pyramids!