CNN currently running this breathless and breathtakingly circular come-on: “How Obama Can Get Beyond Reverend Wright.” What, in other words, can Barack Obama possibly do to make our newsdesk here at CNN cease covering Jeremiah Wright as a desperate way of boosting our flagging ratings? Tune us in and find out.
Late Update, Thursday, 10:34 am:
In case you thought we were being overly pessimistic or dismissive of CNN’s journalistic integrity, the network makes its circular stance doubly clear today: “Can Obama Close the Door on Wright?”
At CNN? Never in a million freaking years, apparently.
Back in the day, Philip Morris really had it working: they produced the world’s most profitable brands of tobacco, the nicotine levels of which they were secretly manipulating, and they owned half the US Congress, which made it difficult for anyone to complain. But after decades of anti-smoking activism, the words “Philip Morris” became synonymous with death and wasting disease. Ouch.
Their support in Congress collapsed not long thereafter. Activists beat the brand, in other words.
And so the two words “Philip Morris,” like a blackened pair of lungs, were exchanged for something new and minty-fresh: Philip Morris became Altria.
Suddenly no one cared a whit that the maker of Marlboro cigarettes also marketed Jell-O and Kool-Aid.
Those of you in marketing (a staggeringly high percentage of the VDB demographic, actually) know this move well: bring in a neutral created term, built from partial syllables with vaguely positive connotations.
Which brings us to Entergy, owner/operator of the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Plant, the safety record of which has become something of a running joke over the last year.
As we’ve reported at various points over that same year, Entergy is involved in a multi-stage attempt to transfer corporate responsibility away from the parent company, and in so doing, to rebrand the entire effort, moving away from the whiff of incompetence and mendacity that now drifts in when the name “Entergy” surfaces in conversation.
That effort is now seriously upon us.
In a press release last week, Entergy announced the creation of not one, but two new companies: “Enexus Energy Corporation,” which will eventually own Entergy’s six unregulated nuclear reactors, including Yankee, and “EquaGen LLC,” a joint venture between Entergy and Enexus which will operate those same plants.
Confused yet? That is, of course, the point.
Under the new dispensation, Entergy will be removed not once, but twice from the activities and liabilities of Vermont Yankee. Activists will need, perforce, to concentrate on EquaGen to influence daily practice, and Enexus to press long-term issues like transparency and decommissioning.
Corporate spokesman Rob Williams, according to industry scuttlebut, will be known henceforth as “Equabob.”
To take EquaGen as a case in point, we should offer the industry explanation of the created term first:
“The goal for the joint venture naming was to capture an identity that would stress the company’s track record of safe nuclear operations and its expertise in leading the industry in a new direction. EquaGen (ekwa-jen) gets its origins from the words ‘equity’ and ‘generation.’ EquaGen stands for a company focused on providing world-class safety, operations, security and productivity.”
The stunning 2007 cooling tower collapse
It’s worth noting that this mass of gibberish comes from the very high-priced shop of an “international brand architect” based in California, the RiechesBaird Company.
We don’t know about you, but if we were looking for someone to rebrand our rapidly aging nuclear operation, we might select a catchier bidder than “RiechesBaird.”
But be that as it may, the new brand names would seem to fit Entergy’s pressing linguistic needs: they are vague, they are built of positive partial syllables, and best of all, neither of them is “Entergy.”
It’s interesting, though, to consider the lengths to which RiechesBaird has gone to control the pronunciation of Equagen, which might well be pronounced “EEK-wa-gen,” if the corporate press release hadn’t specifically instructed otherwise. This fixed pronunciation, of course, is designed to enshrine the word “equity” in the minds of those who find themselves using the new word.
And “equity,” for a progressive state like Vermont, is all good.
But you have to wonder how it figures, in any way, shape or form, into the corporate planning of any of the three E-themed shells now encompassing Vermont Yankee. Yes, everyone has an equal right to purchase the power produced by the plant. But equity exhausts its usefulness as a concept at that point.
But that’s the genius of RiechesBaird. A wave of their cologne-scented hands, and suddenly “equity” is all we talk about when we talk about Yankee.
Back in November we broke a story that was initially dismissed, and then covered with some alacrity by the rest of the Vermont media: Maggie and Arnie Gundersen, two very articulate critics of Entergy and Vermont Yankee, released a white paper with some very striking conclusions, chief among them that Entergy’s Decommissioning Fund was woefully lacking. Back then, we slugged our post, “The Gundersen Report Cometh.” It was some hot stuff.
Today, we’d like to update that headline to something a little more current: “The Gundersen Report Cometh, and Kicketh More Than a Bit of Entergy Ass.”
Arnie, in yellow, left, discusses corporate mendacity with Gorty Baldwin at last year’s Hamburger Summit
What changed? Yesterday, the Vermont House acted (81-58) on the Gundersen’s warnings, and voted to require Entergy to put up either enough cash or a sufficient line of credit to decommission the plant and return it to “greenfield” status.
Not “Safestor,” mind you, but “greenfield.” Which is to say that Vermonters should be able to use the site once it’s decommissioned, rather than drive in a huge circle around it for 75 years or so.
“The legislation, which has passed the Senate, would direct the Public Service Board, if it approves the corporate restructuring, to make sure the new owners guarantee there will be enough money in the fund ‘for complete and immediate decommissioning.’”
Terri Hallenbeck has a nice write-up, with more details. But one thing to note: the margin in the House was far from veto-proof. And they don’t call Jim Douglas the Man From Entergy for nothing.
But what a tasty electoral issue that veto would provide. Or would, if Democrats had a candidate. Want to know why VDB is constantly pushing for candidates to declare early? Look no further.
Maggie Gundersen, Hamburger Summit, 2007
It’s not just that declaring early leaves time to unsettle and out-organize an entrenched incumbent, although that’s the primary reason. It’s also that a declared candidate allows you to manage that entrenched incumbent in the year leading up to the election, to help move him or her to your policy positions.
Will Pollina’s Progressive candidacy be enough of a curb to make Jim Douglas do the right thing in this case? Only time will tell.
But for now one thing is absolutely certain: Maggie and Arnie Gundersen came to play.
The New York Times, which endorsed Hillary Clinton in the run-up to her home-state primary, is apparently having second thoughts this morning. Or maybe, having read the piece again, we should say third thoughts. In any event, they’ve really got their pin-striped panties in a bunch.
Announcer: Commentator Philip Baruth’s Vermont, whatever else might be said about it, is a very strange place. Today he imagines confronting the Olympic torch, and all of the political contradictions now implicit within it.
Notes from the New Vermont Commentary #214: My Vermont Contains Multitudes (And a Torch)
Funny the things you remember. For instance, one night last week I was walking down Church Street, and I remember wishing I hadn’t ordered that second dozen chicken wings, or that I’d opted for the quote-unquote “medium-hot” wings instead of the quote-unquote “Georgia Asphalt” wings.
Because even though it was a beautiful false-spring night, all I could think about was finding the nearest car-wash, and hosing myself down completely.
There’s a certain sense of shame that accompanies a serious buffalo wing binge, and I was really feeling it — not just on my hands, but in my soul. I was nursing a big 72-ounce cup of ice water but it seemed only to be making the swelling in my lips worse.
Then I noticed a commotion on the block ahead of me, but whether it was screaming or cheering was hard to make out. Coming up Church Street, at a good solid dogtrot, was a guy in neon shorts carrying what looked like the Olympic Torch, surrounded by a hulking Chinese security team in light blue track suits.
It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out what was going on. Protestors have been ambushing the torch on its way to China, to protest China’s record on human rights, and in France they were able to actually extinguish it, twice. So when the torch reached San Francisco, organizers tried something different: they switched the torch’s route at the last possible moment.
Now the bait-and-switch had obviously been taken to the next level: instead of being flown to India, as reported, the torch was here, in Vermont, on Church Street, headed straight for me.
And suddenly I knew what I had to do. Just as the torch passed me, I would reach between the bodyguards and douse the flame with my Big Gulp. Because in my Vermont it’s not okay to work innocent people for pennies an hour, or to attack them with tanks, or to try and create your own Dalai Lami, in order to confuse believers.
But just as the bodyguards dog-trotted into range, I remembered something else, a piece by VPR commentator John Morton that ran years ago, called “The Torch.”
In it, Morton talked about seeing the torch run in Canada to the 1988 Calgary Winter Olympics, and being allowed himself to pass it hand to hand in a little mountain village called Canmore. The thing I remember most about the piece was Morton’s deep pride in that flame, the pride of a man who’d been an Olympic athlete, a trainer and a team leader. He saw it as a way to unite the world, and everyone in it, no matter who, no matter what.
And I realized then that I also sided with Morton: in my Vermont, people don’t snuff out the Olympic flame, no matter who, no matter what.
But that meant my Vermont was a mass of political contradictions. Which is fine: like Walt Whitman, it’s large, it can contain multitudes.
But what to do about the torch?
I’m not going to lie; I did the only thing I could. As the massive Chinese security team jogged by, I shook every one of their hands real good, covering them with some strange red American substance that burned with the heat of a thousand suns.
[This commentary ran first on Vermont Public Radio. Audio of the piece is available here.]
That’s Carson McCullers below. An astounding writer: she published The Heart is a Lonely Hunter when she was 23 years old. Fat chance the rest of us match that feat. But it’s worth asking: if you write fiction, how ambitious are you? I’ll be teaching a summer workshop starting May 19, through UVM’s Continuing Education. It meets three days a week. And CE has reduced tuition this year. All skill levels welcome, from beginner to those looking to place stories or novels professionally. Now’s not a bad time to get serious.
Even as we speak, planning for the Democratic National Convention is underway in Denver. That planning is taking place right now, as you read, in the old Denver Post building downtown, that imposing brown structure right in the center. Looks all but impregnable, right? Right.
Photos by Bill Stetson
But let’s take a quick peek inside, which is a little less imposing. See all of that cavernous, empty space? DNCC organizers thought there’d be a nominee by now, whose team would be helping to fill those endless soundproofed cubicles. But no. Not this time out.
It’s an eerie sight, all of that nothingness, because it brings to mind all of the coordinated somethingness going on, even as we speak, between the McCain campaign and the RNC.
Anyone who tells you that the continued back-and-forth between the Obama and Clinton campaigns is strengthening our hand in November is a sad, deluded fool.
Yet seeing these pictures only strengthens our iron resolve to become one of the Obama delegates to represent Vermont in Denver, come August. Because they make clear that this nomination process remains entirely unpredictable, and potentially chaotic.
Among other things, the Clinton campaign has made it clear that they will attempt to make inroads even into Obama’s pledged delegates. Hard to imagine, but after last week’s debate perhaps not.
And that’s where VDB comes in.
Of two things you can rest assured: first, if we do make it to Denver as a pledged delegate, then pledged means pledged, period; and second, we will transmit every detail of the ongoing donnybrook, no matter how small, directly to your desktop, with just enough humor to make it worth the read.
To get to Denver, though, we still need your help at the State Convention in Barre, the 24th of May, just a few weeks from now. A good number of you have written in with help of all sorts, and it couldn’t be any more greatly appreciated.
But we’re still shy the votes we need. That’s the brutal truth.
So if you plan to be there, or know someone in your town’s delegation who might help a brother out, please get in touch. That’s the beauty of the blogosphere: the shocking connectivity, the force in numbers that rise up out of nowhere, accomplish what they will, and return to invisibility.
It boils down to this: if just one guy with one cellphone on the ground in Colorado can be our eyes, then only God knows what all of us can do together. And He isn’t saying.
When Peter Clavelle went up against Uncle Jim in 2004, he built his entire campaign around fixing health care. Douglas, for his part, built his entire campaign around fixing Peter Clavelle, and fixing him but good. Mostly this was accomplished with an attack ad showing nothing but Clavelle fumbling the roll-out of his own long-touted health care initiative. Just raw footage of the trainwreck. Now, in a nice bit of karma, someone’s done the same for Douglas, and the roll-out of his phantom stimulus plan. Sweet.
