The gaz of life

It's the brazenness of absurdity that often gives the absurd its special piquancy, transforming ordinary, common-place absurdity into the kind of gas you'd be well advised not to light a match near.

Artist's, and I include writers here, are often absurd. The surrealists were brazenly absurd, and dada too, for the purposes of art. One can look at a picture of what is obviously a tobacco pipe with the words, this is not a pipe (ceci n'est pa une pipe) written beneath the picture, and get the point. There's a logic to it: yes, something's not right, something's out of place, some order's been disturbed, even reversed--the way you think about things might be disrupted to a place near insanity--but there's not the unpleasant olfactory consequence of being told something brazenly absurd for financial or political gain.

Imagine, then, reading as I read the other day, two stories in The New York Times in which the fumes of absurdity emanated from public servants supposedly working on behalf of the public good, turned noxious, and perhaps, deadly.

These breathtaking stories appeared in The NY Times (Oct. 14, 2017 pA9), one "below the fold" as newspaper people like to say, and one above.

The story below the fold: the nomination of Kathleen Hartnett White to be the White House senior advisor on environmental policy. According to Mrs. White, carbon dioxide emissions are not "pollutant," they are in fact, "the gas of life," and claiming that carbon dioxide emissions are pollutants is "absurd." Renewable energy is "unreliable and parasitic"; furthermore, global warming is "a creed, a faith, a dogma that has little to do with science." She awaits confirmation in the Senate. 

The story above the fold: proposed oil and gas drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Range, the 19-million acre refuge in northeastern Alaska, headlined "The G.O.P's Latest, Best Chance to Break a Drilling Impasse."