On Sleigh Rides and the Vermont Media

Oh my, it’s a wonderful day to avoid. So I think I’ll stay inside and annoy you, dear readers. It sure beats the rain/sleet/snow trifecta taking place outside my window. Ass, meet chair. And let’s play.

First, the horsy news: Yours truly will be working in Stowe over the holiday weekend. The task? Sleigh rides, of course. It’ll be a hellish seven-day assignment whereby I’ll be giving rides to moneyed believers while trying my best to hide my non-moneyed, non-believer side. Can you say “tips”? I knew you could. But when you’ve got the draft horse bug, it’s a fine gig. Gitty-up.

Or if you’d like to look at it another way, pulling tourists around is a whole hell of a lot more lucrative than pulling logs around.

I had a trial run on Monday and was stunned that clients actually showed up in the 3-degree frigidity of the day to be pulled around in a frozen sled. But they did. And, being the good tourists, they even pretended to be having a good time under all those blankets.

As my buddy, Jack, said: “They had to do it so they could check it off their list.”

Yep, and when they get home to show their gazillion photos to those who will be pretending to care, I bet they’ll even convince themselves that they had a grand time.

Oh America, when will you ever wake yourself? Well, actually, wait until after the holiday week so I can make a few bucks off your ninniness.

One thing’s for sure, I should have plenty of stories.

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I’ve been trying my hardest to get back into the thick of Vermont politics. But every time I start paying attention to what’s happening I can’t get the feeling out of my head that everyone participating in and writing about Vermont politics is just playing some kind of after school dress-up game. As in: Quick, mom and dad are gone, let’s dress up and pretend to be political and/or media players. Yes, it all really feels that dopey. Or maybe I just watch too many episodes of Vermont This Week or listen to too much WDEV? I swear they both have one criterion for appearing: Blandness.

I fully realize that Vermont loves to celebrate its mediocrity, but we all seem to be hitting new lows – especially when it comes to the media and its kindergarten-like coverage of all-things “political.”

In a time, for example, that the state and the nation seems to be neck-deep in economic doo-doo, no one in the Vermont media has put a matchstick’s worth of heat on any of our political leaders. Our big three federal free-loaders – Leahy, Sanders and Welch – have literally spent their lifetimes at the public trough, pontificating and otherwise genuflecting at the altar of power for decades upon decades. And yet who’s asking them to explain their role in and/or solution to the crisis that those of us without six-figure salaries and universal health care are mired in? Oh yeah, I forgot, they’re busy trying to get their inaugural wardrobe in order – nevermind the stress of handing out those coveted tickets!

Sorry, but if – like Leahy, Sanders and Welch – you’ve been an elected official for decades, it seems like you ought to be issuing some pretty sobering apologies and explanations for what you’ve been doing while the entire economy was imploding under your well-paid noses. And if you’re going to play the “it was Bush’s fault” card, start explaining your lock-step positions against impeachment.

But they don’t have to worry about answering tough questions – not when Vermont’s media is more interested in regurgitating their press releases and giggling like schoolgirls whenever they make themselves available. “Oh Mr. Leahy, tell me again how you help cook the holiday meal?” But, whatever you do, Mr. and Ms. Vermont Media, don’t ask him to explain how his unprecedented pursuit of pork spending has distracted him from the bigger picture and contributed to the political cesspool known as Washington Politics. You know, something like: “Do you think having your name on so many buildings and pork-spending projects has contributed to the mess we’re facing?”

And let’s not forget about our governor, the affably sinister Jim Douglas. Yikes, speaking of living off the public dole! Well, let’s put it this way, Jim Douglas has been taking the people’s money since Richard Nixon was president. And he voted for him, too – good Republican that he is.

Douglas got to skate through his last election by facing the two easiest major party political opponents in Vermont history. I mean, come on, Pollina and Symington made Fred Tuttle and Rich Tarrant look – well – almost serious. While the economy was crashing due to a credit crunch on his watch, for example, one of his opponents – Pollina –  couldn’t stop touting a state-issued credit card as an economic “solution.” And Douglas’ other opponent – Symington – never quite completed a coherent sentence or thought so it’s hard to say what she was thinking.

Oh wait, we can certainly count on the Vermont media for throwing some hard questions at the lifetime politician and sitting governor who was presiding over the greatest economic meltdown since the Great Depression, right? Wrong. Cue chirping grasshopper music.

But wait, it gets better. After Douglas skated to an embarrassingly easy victory – beating both Pollina and Symington even if you combined their vote totals – he proved just how serious he was going to take the state’s economic mess: He appointed boy-blunderer, Neale Lunderville, to be his new Secretary of Administration. Yeah, that made him the guy in charge of the Governor’s administration of the budget – among other things.

And Lunderville’s credentials? Cue chirping grasshopper music (again). Well, actually, cut car wreck soundtrack. Because before drying off the wet behind his ears and accepting his new job, Lunderville did his novice best to all but destroy the state’s roads and bridges as the Secretary of Transportation. And before that? Well, he freshly immersed from the loins of political science classes and the Douglas political campaigns.

But don’t expect the Vermont media to put a spotlight on any of this. They’re too busy trying to buy him a drink when he enters McGillicuddy’s.

Now are you beginning to understand why I’m working with draft horses? It’s opinions like the above that got me thrown out of the Vermont media. Gitty-up, indeed. People. Logs. Whatever.

Carry on.