Vermont Yankee Meets National Inspirational Role Models Month

Get this, God,

In the PR trade, we sometimes tie publicity pushes to calendar dates. There's even a really cool book of publicity-begging days, months, and weeks. It's called Chase's Calendar of Events.

I'm at the Brattleboro library and I just looked up November. Seems like there's a lot happening this month aside from Thanksgiving! Like, did you know that November is National Inspirational Role Models Month?

So I'm thinking—hey! People say Vermont Yankee is a Mickey Mouse enterprise. Let's do a Phineas T. Barnum on these people and turn that into a positive. Let's celebrate National Inspirational Role Models Month by rejoicing in the inspiration that Vermont Yankee drawx from Mickey Mouse.

Was that a groan I heard or thunder? Stay with me on this one, Lord. At least hear me out on my "Ten Shameless Ways in Which I Try to Liken a Potentially Armageddon-Producing Monstrosity Like Vermont Yankee to an Innocuous, Feel-Good Character Like Mickey Mouse."

1. Mickey Mouse is not really a mouse. Still, his success was the foundation of the entire Disney enterprise. Vermont Yankee is not really a Yankee enterprise. It's not even a Vermont one. (It is owned by a Louisiana conglomerate.) Still, its success is the foundation of a cartoonish amount of corporate profit.

2. Mickey Mouse's likeness and his smiling image can be found on tee shirts, mouse pads, sneakers, coffee mugs, hats, toys, and sheets. Vermont Yankee's corporate name can be found on the tax rolls in the small town of Vernon, Vermont, which it sued when it objected to its property tax assessment.

3. The legends about Mickey's creation vary. Was he originally named "Mortimer?" Is his character based on the character of a particularly sweet pet mouse of Walt Disney's? The legends about Vermont Yankee's creation vary. Did the legislature really approve the plant's construction only when the swing vote (married) became romantically entangled with a proponent (also married), threw her judgment to the wind, voted his way, and ran off with him leaving their families in the lurch?

4. As early as the 1930s, Mickey Mouse merchandise began irretrievably flooding the market. Vermont Yankee produces waste that will never go away—and never stop radiating.

5. Walt Disney chose a mouse as his signature character because, although many people are afraid of them, if they're drawn well, they can seem cute. Many people are afraid of Vermont Yankee, but if the PR team is aggressive enough and the PR effort is supported by gratuitous charitable donations (gratuitous by local non-profit standards; the amounts are actually insignificant to Vermont Yankee), many otherwise anti-nuke people will become mousy for fear of seeming ungrateful.

6. The very first Mickey Mouse cartoon was called "Plane Crazy." In that movie, Mickey takes Minnie up in a plane and tries to kiss her. When she resists he resorts to force. Allowing Vermont Yankee to bribe, threaten, shame, and otherwise coerce Vermonters into acquiescing to a licentious license renewal is plain crazy.

7. Mickey Mouse was so popular that, in 1929, Mickey Mouse Clubs began to form at local theatres for Saturday afternoons of cartoons and games. Nuclear power is so dangerous that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has been created to protect people from its threat. However, the commission seems to spend its time with its own regulatees in fun afternoons of cartoons and games.

8. When World War II started, the Disney Studio suspended production of commercial cartoons and concentrated instead on making films that would support the military. For as long as there has been federal control of nuclear research and materials, there has been an interest in using commercial nuclear reactors as a source of materials to make military weapons.

9. Mickey has starred in many computer and video games. Some are aimed at very young children and, unfortunately, bring children into close contact with monitors, many of which are radiation emitting. Vermont Yankee radiates young children. Cancer rates in Windham County are mysteriously much higher than they are in the remainder of Vermont.

10. In a supreme moment of fun and humility that moved much of the nation to tears, while introducing his very first television show, Walt Disney said, " I hope we never lose sight of one fact -- that this was all started by a mouse." When the Vermont Yankee cooling tower collapsed we said, "Yeah, but this is not safety-related." Lots of people cried.

What do you think, Lord? Cut/print/got it?

Fake-Rob

PS: By egregiously taking advantage of the Mickey Mouse name, I am in no way implying an endorsement by Disney or Mickey Mouse of Vermont Yankee or even, heaven forbid, of my prayers to you.