By Nic Lindh on Friday, 09 January 2004
A rumor somehow got started yesterday that one of the pipelines bringing in the precious life blood of the Valley of the Sun had ruptured, potentially leading to a repeat of this summer’s complete cluster f**k. While it’s not yet known how the rumor got started, the friendly afternoon crew of 101.5 KZON apparently poured gasoline on the flames by making jokes about a gas shortage.
(101.5 is one of the stations I have programmed in my car; they play a decent top 40 alternative mix. However, I absolutely can not stand their afternoon crew. Seldom has a more vacuous bunch of idiots been allowed to pollute the airways.)
The governor’s office and Kinder Morgan attempted damage control by getting the word out to as many news outlets as possible that the pipeline was indeed fine, but a lot of people chose to not believe them.
A repeat of the insanity this August would indeed be terrible, and it is scary just how fragile our infrastructure really is, but seriously, people. You almost get a feeling that people want things to go to hell in a hand basket for some perverted reason so they can queue and hoard and in general go all Mad Max.
It also shows the credit some people put to anything coming from official sources. “If the governor’s office and the company responsible both say that everything is fine, that must mean they’re all lying and it’s a conspiracy to make sure that They can get their gas. Hmm. Yeah. That’s the ticket. It’s They again. Damn liberals.”
I shudder to even think about what must have been going on on the rant and rave radio talk shows yesterday. Probably much better for my blood pressure to not know.