From the Bench
HOMELAND SECURITY’S "ORANGE ALERT" HIGHLIGHTS DUCT TAPE
Homeland Security general Tom Ridge and his army of bureaucrats in Washington soon will be educating the rest of the nation to what we in the south have known for some time: duct tape is the most significant invention of the past century.
Many of the items the security folks list as "must haves" for your emergency survival kit are well-known staples that the Red Cross has popularized for many years. Flashlights, band aids, antiseptics, battery-operated radios and spare batteries, water, pork and beans, sardines (I added that one on my own). You are familiar with the list.
But DUCT TAPE? That’s a new one. Supposedly, this would be used to seal your environment from chemical and biological contamination that, even as this is written, is probably creeping through the sieve of our borders (have I scared you yet?); however, I submit that there is a more subterranean motive on the part of the Bush administration.
Consider this. The domestic economy is in dire need of rejuvenation. Unemployment remains high. Profits continue to decline, or at least are recovering too slowly to pull the stock market out of the pits. As stocks go down, anxiety-driven retirees sit in front of their TVs and watch their IRAs plummet.
Enter duct tape into this scenario. Many of the sophisticated inhabitants of such elite environs as New York, Boston, San Francisco, Hollywood, and Palm Beach never heard of it. They wouldn’t recognize it if they saw it. Furthermore, since it wasn’t "discovered" there, they would, in normal times, hold it in predictable contempt.
But these are not normal times. The sophisticates have been convinced by their own egos and the government PR departments that they would be prime targets should the terrorists attack. (After all, how could the State Department function without the advice and consent of Barbara Streisand and Alec Baldwin?)
Given this unusual convergence of circumstances, a floundering economy and the administration’s unconvincing craving for war, duct tape becomes a fortuitous beneficiary. The possibilities are endless.
Employment will soar in those places where duct tape is a new age phenomenon. These people will find it necessary to hire duct tape ‘consultants", duct tape installers, and, once the crisis is over, duct tape removal specialists.
New trade unions will spring up!
In addition to that, if you have ever seen the havoc good quality duct tape can wreak to a painted surface, you know what comes next. That’s right. Repainting. In many cases, whole houses will be redecorated as postwar enthusiasm grows.
The "discovery" of duct tape will not be lost on the New York media. Books will be written, and reviewed by Katie Couric, even though "undiscovered" books were long ago published on its versatility. Diane Sawyer will interview trial lawyers and victims of duct tape injury, ignorant of the perils of duct tape in unskilled hands.
All the while, retirees will be so busy sealing their houses with duct tape that they won’t have time to watch their IRAs continue to drop. Once they have completed the task, they will turn back to CNBC just in time to catch the financial gurus advising them to sell defense stocks and buy duct tape manufacturers.
As always happens, they will catch the tail end of the duct tape boom and fall victim to the "great duct tape bubble."
Meanwhile, small towns all across the south will begin to fall apart as veteran duct tape consumers wonder why the local hardware suddenly ran out of duct tape.
Only in America.