Original Publish Date: January 16, 2008
Chumley Blog
The Protean Truth: On Bugs, Terror, & Getting to Know the Candidates
By Woodchuck Chumley
Sharpening my pencils late last night while enjoying a scotch on the rocks, it occurred to me that I've spent the last several days ignoring a growing pile of reader mail that's been accumulating on the western corner of my desk. Procrastination is not my style, but neither is avoidance, and so to assuage one act, I had to engage in the other, at least for the time being. With that in mind, I'll get to the matter of this blog and the following week's news in just a moment, but first, about those letters.
It appears that the good reporters and editors of GRR News are upsetting readers by paying copious amounts of attention to insects and bug life on GRRnews.com. Readers are angry and have asked that the practice of publishing the words and ideas of such invertebrates stop. Apparently too many insects have been quoted in GRR stories, and an uncomfortable many have appeared in Reader Feedback to the news. Manny, a Torrent Duck from South America writes, "Dear Chumley and GRR News, I'm a big fan of your reporting and your blogs, but I just can't get behind the 'equal time' policy you seem to have with regard to invertebrates. If you don't reconsider, I'm going to have to find another network to follow. I am all for living harmoniously, but giving voice to food is just...stupid."
Sarah, a Sand Cat from Algeria, writes, "Dear Chumley, I have eaten animals thousands of times larger than some of those in which you publish within your news pages. I can understand your desire to listen to the rodent and bird world, but what, frankly, is a common aphid going to teach me about life, especially through Reader Feedback questions? If you publish mosquitoes, what's next? Blogs by bed bugs and commentaries from scarabs?"
As the eldest and arguably wisest voice of GRR News, I assure you, animal public, it is not within our practice to heed advice of and/or criticism from invertebrates. Nor are we interested in catering to invertebrate-based dramatic news stories, breaking or not, which we all agree most often do not amount to a hill of beans. It is with deep regret that we at GRR admit that unbeknownst to us our news agency has harbored an insect-liberal in the newsroom. This beast, who shall remain unnamed, is of good heart but fuzzy mind. Fear not, for she is now working in the lunchroom.
On to greater topics.
The sky is falling, and the sky is falling again. The GSA has ratcheted up the terror threat level to orange, with a promise of imminent attack somewhere, somehow, some time in the future. The only detail the GSA can confirm is that the attacks will happen in the future, and that they are not happening now, and have not happened in the past. Let's hope the GSA is more informed than our weather turtle, Rusty.
If the GSA story wasn't enough to spin your jets, the lovely, loquacious Gizelle chatted with politico hippo Ptolemy about the recent DNA findings regarding his paternity suit - notably not the purple one with the large lapels, but rather the legal document filed last month in Las Vegas. After swimming through a couple of paragraphs placing us front and center as Gizelle acquaints herself with basic science, the fulcrum makes itself known: Ptolemy denied the charges and challenged the veracity of DNA itself. I think plans were also made to party.
In other news, Serbonian Boggers are expatriating to less hostile, more fruitful terrain...the desert? It's been said by wiser woodchucks than me, there's simply no accounting for actions in desperate times. To that effect, Juliet has gone to the dogs, er, wolves, for her latest show of journalistic muscle, talking her way through the gatekeeping of a character named "Thug" to get to the main catch, the leader of the notorious West Coast pack the Lobos. That she does so whilst sporting a GarterSnake T-shirt only speaks to the no-mountain-too-high-no-river-too-deep brand of journalism practiced between the brick and mortar here at GRR News Headquarters.
When I, Woodchuck Chumley, sift through the week's stories, once all of the proper names and decorations have slipped through the holes to find their resting spot at the bottom of a barrel of long-forgotten details, one theme sits squarely on the sieve, for it is too shapely and evident to be dismissed: We have an election coming this year and the world appears to be a giant stewpot coming to a boil, each issue clamoring for the candidates' attention, each candidate taking \(or failing to take\) a position. It is almost as if the news writes itself, for with each new episode the candidates are forced through action or inaction to reveal more about themselves to their voting public. For this we should be grateful. Without the Serbonian Bog drying up we would not know where our candidates sit on illegal migration. Without Ptolemy's DNA staking claim on a baby hippo calf in Vegas we wouldn't know how the candidates plan to cope with issues of family and responsibility. Had those rabbits kept their GULPs and presumably their plans better hidden we might have had a disaster on our hands, and then we'd have the difficult lesson of learning how the candidates would pull our world back together. I suppose we can consider ourselves lucky that we'll instead learn how they plan to deal with disaster before it happens.
What, do you think they'd bring this stuff up if they didn't have to? This is Woodchuck Chumley, signing off.
