John Shaddis Tries to Bribe the Windham Regional Commission

Dear God,

Last night the Windham Regional Commission held a meeting at the River Garden in Brattleboro to gather more public input regarding Vermont Yankee's application for a 20-year extension of its license. Nearly everyone in the crowd was either an employee of Vermont Yankee or was in some way or another on its dole, though there was a handful of depressed nuclear activists in the back of the room. Some of them spoke, though they were royally outnumbered.

It was the Entergy Vermont Yankee side that really shone. The employees spoke about jobs they love and a company they have come to need. The representatives of various nonprofits spoke. They extolled Vermont Yankee's financial contribution to children's summer programs and to a local child care center. Those who are involved with business development referred to the jobs that Entergy Vermont Yankee's presence in the community represents. Just as I was beginning to wonder what vaguely threatening letter or phone call from Entergy Vermont Yankee might have compelled such unalloyed accolades from normally public-minded people and what the social consequences to those people might be of their public testimony on behalf of a company that is threatening the health of the people their nonprofits serve , a representative of a local arts organization came to the front of the room. He deftly demonstrated how to give lip service to one's donors while hanging on however tenuously to one's dignity.

The arts organization rep is a well-liked guy; very funny and personable and extremely well-spoken. What he said was an education to PR sorts like me everywhere and should be studied by representatives of other beneficiaries of Entergy's largesse, as well. He parsed his gratitude. He said that the relicensing of Entergy Yankee is a difficult emotional issue and that he is only qualified to speak to the plant's generous support of the arts organization he directs. The marvelous thing about his little talk was that he was able to say exactly what he needed to say in order to get continuing dollars from Entergy Vermont Yankee without saying anything that actually spoke to the matter at hand--the safety of the plant. I imagined him going out for drinks later with friends. When they asked whether he testified in favor of re-licensing, he might say, "I smoked, but I didn't inhale." I was so enthralled by his ability to say much while saying little that I was disappointed when he sat down. I guess I had been hoping to hear him parse, in President Clinton style, the meaning of the word "is."

Anyway, Lord, I would like to confess that, as the evening wore on, I was beset by doubts. They weren't about you or your existence or your ability to protect the people of Vermont, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts from the fatal effects (especially in children) of the plant's daily radiation emissions. The doubts were about Entergy Vermont Yankee itself. Is the company for which I spin news guilty of bribery? Had they just bought the testimony of their employees and of their nonprofit beneficiaries? The thought was so painful that I had to resort to tightening the barbed celice that I always wear on my thigh. Tightening the celice caused blood to rush from my brain to and then out of the thigh itself. When it did, I had an epiphany:

It is not Entergy Vermont Yankee that is guilty of manipulating with gifts. It is the activists!

To whit: John Shaddis, the adult son of nuclear activist Ray Shaddis, began his testimony by giving each member of the Windham Regional Commission a copy of the Academy Award winning documentary "Chernobyl Heart."

In your all-knowingness, do you know the movie, Lord? It takes its name from a heart condition unheard of prior to the Chernobyl disaster. Chernobyl Heart is when Caesium-137 attacks the heart and causes heart dysfunction, leading to severe heart damage, heart attacks, and strokes. A condition once so rare that it was never even noticed, it occurs in shockingly high numbers in children born in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus after the year 1986. Mind you, Lord, it isn't just children who were in utero during and immediately after the Chernobyl disaster that have Chernobyl Heart. You see, the entire area remains contaminated; furthermore, Caesium-137 continues to leak slowly, disastrously, from the sarcophagus that was once the main power source of that area of the world. Which means that, to this day, children are being born with Chernobyl Heart. They have extremely short life expectancies.

As an example of how contaminated the region continues to be, during the course of filming in the Ukraine and Belarus, the filmmaker herself acquired Caesium-137 poisoning, though she has since received excellent treatment and recovered.

Lord, I have not used the celise to bind and hurt my thigh since last night. Still, the epiphany it brought on has remained brilliant in my mind. Do you not agree with my new understanding of payola, Lord? Does not the passing out of gifts worth $15 dollars or so to the several members of a public board constitute bribery--even if it is done in public and the gift is supplemental to the testimony? Do you not think that John Shaddis should be ashamed? Jailed? Flagellated perhaps?

And getting back to the guy from the arts organization, the one who smokes but doesn't inhale: Do you think he can definitively answer at long last whether President Clinton ever "had sex with that woman?"

Amen,

Fake-Rob