George Will. The man likes to cull through obscure historical and almanac material to pull together true facts to distort the truth. He counts on you not looking them up. This Sunday, he counted on you living outside of Denver.
If you watched This Week With George Stephanopoulus, and you actually sat through Will's closing essay, you probably left with the impression that "Denver is competing with CA to be the capital of low political comedy." That was his opening quote, and he concluded with this retread: "Give Denver its due. It is giving California a run for its money in this summer's absurdity sweepstakes."
Here's why: A man named Jeff Peckman has gathered enough signatures to get a Safety Through Peace initiative on the ballot, which would require the goverment to implement stress-reducing measures. Here's how Georgie described what Denver is up against: "Peckman's measure might require Denver to pipe into public places soothing music; sitars, perhaps--and what Peckman calls primordial sounds. Maybe recordings of wind rustling the aspen leaves, or the noises whales make. Perhaps the city would pay for incense on buses and massages in every park. Or mass mediation in Mile High stadium when the Broncos are not using it for their stressful work."
That was an unabridged transcript of the heart of his essay. Only two problems. First, he's making most of it up. Check out his wording, with emphasis added: "Peckman's measure might require Denver to pipe into public places soothing music; sitars, perhaps--and what Peckman calls primordial sounds. Maybe recordings of wind rustling the aspen leaves, or the noises whales make. Perhaps the city would pay for incense on buses and massages in every park. Or mass mediation in Mile High stadium when the Broncos are not using it for their stressful work."
He must have had fun making up all the most outlandish initiatives he could think of--though he wasn't very creative; nothing but boilerplate wingnut cliches--too bad none of that is proposed in the initiative. A whimsical little (very little) USA Today story written by a local reporter states that the measure "doesn't tell Denver's local government how to do it, merely to work for it. But the measure's author, Denver activist Jeff Peckman, suggests soothing music in public places, improved nutrition in school lunches and other calming steps." All those whale sounds and incense are apparently all just in George's imagination.
Here's the bigger problem: There is virtually no chance of this passing, and virtually no one in Denver is even talking about it. This is one of those odd little newsquirk items that George has elevated to national news and pretended it's making the city into a laughingstock. Only in his mind.
I live in Denver and we have lots of ballot initiatives. We like it that. It's relatively easy to get a measure on the ballot here, extremely hard to pass one. It takes a very solid measure with a strong constituency and a hefty ad budget to pass get a 50/50 shot at passage here. Most still go down in defeat. This group has none of those. It will be a trivial item on the ballot that most people in Denver will never even bother to discuss, except, perhaps to comment on its silliness.
Neither local paper appears to have covered it, though USA Today couldn't resist a cutesy little ditty, and The Washington Times apparently followed. But both papers were responsible enough to make it clear the initiative was going nowhere. They were just having fun with it.
But George took a different tack. Utter seriousness, Denver on the brink. Right.
He knows very few of you live in Denver and you'll just assume we're going whacko again out here in the hinterlands. And he can use the illusion to illustrate how screwed up our political system is. Nothing screwed up here but George Will's indiscernible sense of ethics.
Dutton (Penguin) in early 2009. 
