Brick

Copy­right 2005 Ben S. Pollock

Fri­day, July 1, 2005: In this morning’s papers, we read again of local offi­cials ask­ing peo­ple to infor­mally not waste water, before con­ser­va­tion steps are ordered. Again, they say there is no short­age, just that it’s sum­mer and yada, yada, yada.

In pre­vi­ous sum­mers, though, there have been no mum­mers like this, given when there’s reporters to repeat them to the public.

Our reporters ask the offi­cials, is there a drought, a shortage?

The offi­cials emphat­i­cally deny there is any prob­lem at all.

They have taken lessons from the Don­ald Rums­feld School of Press Feed­ing. Rummie’s still get­ting good results from his non-denials. (And it must be noted that at least 40 years of pres­i­den­tial admin­is­tra­tions have used these techniques.)

The local offi­cials have been pressed a lit­tle. The result­ing arti­cles in pass­ing explain that first Beaver Lake is in good shape but our grow­ing com­mu­ni­ties are out­grow­ing the pipes and other infra­struc­ture to get the water to their spig­ots. Sec­ond, it’s been a dryer spring than usual.

The non-denials are annoy­ing; there shouldn’t be any prob­lem with stat­ing the pipes are max­ing out.

But a stronger point to this Brick is, ongo­ing arti­cles spend so much time giv­ing the cur­rent pro­nounce­ment then a degree of back­ground infor­ma­tion, that the “why” essen­tially gets buried. This is what a col­umn can do bet­ter than straight news and bet­ter than editorials.

This sub­ject could be devel­oped into a straight essay, full of com­par­isons with pre­vi­ous announce­ments and a look at, say, South­ern Cal­i­for­nia. And good­ness knows it is ripe for satire. Hose me down with scarce water, it’s so tempt­ing. –30–