It’s Monday, April 18th and, as is my usual routine on the drive into work each morning,I was flipping back and forth between The Bear and Chez. I dislike both stations and personally think both are symptomatic of the modern world’s aspirations to mediocrity…I can’t help but think of, and mourn along with, Tom Petty’s “The Last DJ”. Unfortunately, they are my only two real choices…unless I want to listen to AM talk radio, which wouldn’t be such a bad thing, I suppose. But I digress!

I’ve noticed that the Doc and Woody show have a special grudge against all things environmental. I’ve heard many slurs against us “tree-huggers” from these mopes but, due to my failing memory, I can only quote this week’s shot at us with any degree of accuracy. I think it went something like, “…Now, I would never want to be considered one of those environmentalists…” in a tone that places environmentalists somewhere between pond scum and Brussels sprouts. Now, I tend to pick my battles carefully, but slagging environmentalists is a good start to getting a rise out of me. However, I shrug this one off, as I so often do. I am neither a rocker of boats nor a pisser in of cornflakes.

So, fast forward to Friday, April 22nd – its Earth Day; the day we celebrate this big blue marble that has nurtured and protected life for several hundred million years; and at roughly 4.5 billion years old she wasn’t doing too bad for a middle-aged, cosmic spheroid. That is until we, in all our cancerous glory, hauled our asses outta the primordial goo and screwed everything up. It’s a day when the wolf holds out the olive branch to the rabbit…and really means it. It’s even a day when companies like Dow Chemicals and DuPont stop pumping staggering volumes of some of the most virulent wastes known to man into our earth, air and water…Ok, perhaps that one was just wishful thinking. But you get my point…if you don’t I can go on ad nauseam if you want.

What was I saying? OH YA!

So, today I was listening to The Bear and Stuntman Stu announces that in celebration of Earthday (his words, not mine), they are arranging to have a bunch of Monster Trucks, one powered by a jet engine, come down to the station and rev their engines in an orgy of anti-Earthdayism.

I’m stunned, and not just the usual amount either. Really stunned. How can people with such blatant malice snub their noses at all those socially and environmentally responsible people out there who care whether or not the world that sustains us sickens and dies? Where does this apathy or antipathy come from? Do these people like living in a killing-jar environment? Now, I have to admit here and now that I was only half listening to Stu – there is, afterall, only so much banality intermixed with tediously repetitive attempts at humor I can take. Maybe he was joking. Regardless, the sentiment was there.

Now, you may be asking yourself, what do I care what a few people who are barely above the criteria for working at Burger King® on a government sponsored work placement program for those with special needs are saying? My concern is this: no matter how irresponsible and mentally challenged the views of these particular public personalities are, no matter how flippant or unintentional, people are still listening. And of those people who listen many are bandwagon jumpers who don’t do any thinking for themselves either through laziness or naivety. These people will somehow equate the opinions of those DJ’s with popular opinion, thus degrading the desperate situation our environment is in today. I can hardly blame some people for being naïve; I mean we all are sometimes, right? And, well, I’m hardly one to hurl stones about laziness as those who know me will attest.

I don’t know what to do about this. I mean there isn’t really anything, is there? I don’t even know why I’m writing this other than to vent. I guess people, public personalities or otherwise, will always speak outta their asses to varying degrees of regularity. It’s a fact of life, I suppose. I think basically it just chaps my ass when ignorance is overwritten with more ignorance in the guise of popular opinion or knowledge.