An award to hucksters

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				THE
Column Archive				VIRGINIA GAZETTE
				WILLIAMSBURG, VIRGINIA
An award to hucksters				September 9, 2006

It all started when a bunch of astronomical wizards announced last week that Pluto was no longer a planet. Over 400 members of the International Astronomical Union secretly formed an anti-Pluto cabal and decided that the little fellow no longer passed muster and was out of the planet club. In addition to his microscopic measurements, Pluto’s crime apparently consisted of an oblong orbit that intersected with that of Neptune.

It was this punch to Pluto that put me onto the fact that we seem of late to have been blitzed with other less-than-stellar mental misfires by people who should know better. As a result, I have established to commemorate such cranial caca a new award called the Hucksters Of Outrageously Excremental Yawp, or HOOEY.

The first HOOEY quite rightly goes to those dimwitted astronomers who demoted Pluto. May they wind up in the god’s underworld fiefdom with no change in their pockets for Charon.

The second HOOEY belongs to President George W. Bush. While Bush was on yet another political excursion to the Gulf Coast, he let slip to NBC’s Brian Williams that he was actually reading books. Not only had he delved into the existential meanderings of Albert Camus, but he had waded through “three Shakespeares.” Evidently the maniacal musings of heroes such as Hamlet and Macbeth found a soft landing spot in the presidential synapses. He then went on to assure Williams that his reading interests were “ecaclectic.”

But it was in Gulfport that the president’s penchant for things literary really blazed. Taking a cue from his intense scrutiny of the Old Testament, Bush assured those still waiting for FEMA trailers that “Houses will begat jobs, jobs will begat houses.” Now this is truly amazing. While other presidents have done much to perfect the art of oratory, George Bush will be the first president to so deconstruct the English language that futurity can now be expressed by the past tense. I expect soon to hear from our president that “we will won the war in Iraq.” The future is past. We won and can now bring the troops home. So, a HOOEY to George Bush for his lush linguistic legerdemain.

The third HOOEY goes to Paul Milana, the original architect for New Town. At a recent meeting with the Planning Commission, Milana tried to defend the fact that New Town as it is developing bears little resemblance to the plans initially submitted to the Planning Commission and the Board of Supervisors. According to Milana, if you “squint” hard enough you’ll see some remnants of the original plan. Not in the mood to do much squinting, commissioner Shereen Hughes criticized Milana for the disappearance of green space from the original plan.

Milana’s disingenuously obtuse reply was hooey incarnate. To begin with, said Milana, the original plans for New Town were simply a “concept.” Oh, really? What that seems to imply is that we tout concepts as plans when submitting them to the Planning Commission. Approved plans subsequently turn to ashes, however, when developers realize that the more they supplant agreed-upon open spaces with buildings, the more guilders flow into their coffers. Hence the original concept-plan will begat bunkum, as Bush might say.

But Milana really outdid himself when he proclaimed that roads should be considered open spaces. Why worry about parks, walking spaces or greenery if you have roads? Following this line of reasoning, we might just as well load up Forge Road with developments and businesses, since we have a road down the middle that constitutes plenty of open space. Well, a HOOEY to all that.

The final HOOEY goes to the czars in the Department of Parks & Recreation. Having promised earlier this year that the Community Center would undergo a major overhaul, they have delivered zilch. And on Tuesday, after the rec center had been closed for a week for what is euphemistically called “maintenance,” patrons returned to confront the same malfunctions they left on Aug. 27. The whirlpool, which has been out of commission for weeks, was still kaput. In the men’s sauna, the loose boards on the seats were still flopping around, and the machines upstairs were so greased up with cleaning gunk that people had to keep washing their hands while working out.

Nothing had been done to correct the leaks in the ceiling. In fact, new leaks were drizzling water over the urinals in the men’s locker room. On Wednesday, after being open for only one day, the pool was closed at noon because additional leaks had caused damage in the pump room.

Enough is enough. While Parks & Rec can spend $6 million on Astroturf for ballfields, it seems to be willing to let the rec center rot. The whirlpool must be replaced and the pool machinery upgraded. Leaks in the ceiling and roof should be fixed immediately, lest further damage occur. To allow the status quo to prevail constitutes negligence of the worst sort. The hundreds of patrons who pay for and use the rec center on a daily basis deserve better.

In the end, it all comes back to Pluto. We live in a milieu in which the linguistic hypocrisy of the Neptunes of the world constantly wages war against the struggling orbits of the little guys. And therein lies the biggest HOOEY of all.