Monday, September 10, 2007

Katie Couric's EPA: protecting people from the environment


During the ground zero workers' health story on 60 Minutes last night, Katie Couric actually said to Christie Todd Whitman:
But with all due respect, your job as the head of the EPA, the Environmental Protection Agency, is to protect people from the environment. Did you really do it?
Seriously.

[Cross-posted at the Daily KOS]

I had to note this here, because my family hates the way I scream at the TV. I think I had an aneurysm when she said that.

How could you better sum up the anthropocentrism that is ruining this world? I know she was trying to pin Whitman, or some such wrestling verb that really doesn't apply, but to reverse the logic behind one of the most important agencies in US history is positively, uh, well, Republican. When the EPA was founded, Republicans still argued that it was in the human interest to protect the environment from us. Now apparently, the EPA is here to buy SurvivaBalls from Halliburton.

Why is it that I, with my little BA in Philosophy and an underpaid existence as a Web Site Promoter, can figure this out, but a network news magazine show can't? I mean, does Couric write this stuff? They must have people who check these things? Right?

I was a union stagehand for 20 years. I worked in news. I lit Cokie Roberts (u~g~g~h~h~h~h~h - shudder like Bart and Lisa imagining Patty and Selma naked). I've smoked cigarettes with Al Michaels (OK, sports are news too). These are capitalist giants practicing corporate-centrism. Don't they realize that it's in their best interests to be accurate? Have they not caught on to the "truthiness" thing?

I could go on, but why? As News Corpse pointed out today, KOS Envy is spreading in the right-wing-bat-shit-crazy-o-sphere, and if they can't see that it's my ability to post this that makes the KOS work, well, fuck 'em.