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Lou Pickney's Online Commentary

Setup Man

Monday
August 18, 2003

A column by Bob Welch in today's edition of the Eugene Register-Guard blasts radio host Phil Hendrie. I give Welch credit for listening to the show enough to "get it" as far as understanding the parody elements involved. But where Welch misses the mark is in describing Hendrie's program as "three hours of humankind at its worst."

Phil Hendrie
Phil Hendrie is a very talented broadcaster.

That's a bold statement to make. Humankind at its worst. Because Hendrie uses parody to poke fun at the uptight and pretentious and the inexplicable of society, that makes it humankind at its worst?!? Please. Is the program truly worse than even the stereotypes it satirizes, from homeowners associations to business owners to overly egotistical men (with the Chris Norton "very setsy" bit)?

Hendrie is an amazing talent, an orator with the ability to play multiple voice roles in a live improvisational comedy discussion in which the callers are unaware they are being had. You want humankind at its worst? Look to people like Uday Hussein and Adolf Hitler and Pol Pot, individuals who obtained power and created widespread misery and death among their own people. In the interim, Mr. Welch, I suggest that you use the power of the off button and find something else to rant about in your columns.

It's been fascinating reading about the major power blackout that crippled New York City, Cleveland, Detroit and Toronto late last week. Electricity is something that is taken for granted, particularly in the United States, though I'd suggest that the majority of Americans have little idea as to how the process actually works. They just plug in their appliances and devices and pay the power bill each month. But when the juice quits flowing... lookout. My friend Tali was at work in Cleveland when the outage hit there; they evacuated her building, meaning she had to walk down 27 flights of stairs. For people in the Empire State Building in New York City, you can add about 60-70 flights (if not more) for people in similar circumstances. Tali finally managed to get a cell phone signal, and she called me from her car. She wasn't going anywhere, though; she just wanted some AC. At the time traffic was a snarled mess in Cleveland (with power lights out all across the city), and the information outlets were limited. She tried tuning to some radio stations in town, only to find that a number were off the air. I gave her an update with what I knew on this end, that it was a system-wide breakdown rather than a terrorist attack (which many initially feared).

New York City blackout
The blackout created a transportation nightmare in New York City.

On my end, I keep usually 4-5 gallons of bottled water on supply, with this being an area with the potential for a hurricane hit. It's really not a bad idea to keep water on standby; even in cases not involving an attack (like 9/11) or natural disaster, you never know when you might need a water supply. Such as a widespread power outage, which also shut down the water treatment plants in the affected cities.

Correcting the power outage problem won't be easy. This week's Newsweek has an intriguing article about how the energy infrustructure of this country (and, to a certain extent, Canada) is woefully antiquated in many ways. It won't be cheap, quick or easy to correct the problem...

A new release by the Department of Justice reveals that the U.S. has the highest incarceration rate in the world, with 1 in 37 adults either being held in prison or having served time there. Not jail, prison (and yes, there is a huge difference). According to the release, "Nearly 1 in 4 of the inmates in federal and state prisons are there because of drug-related offenses, most of them nonviolent." Tough laws = re-election.


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