Page 16 THE VILLADOM TIMES I • September 21, 2011 was silence. I pondered a magazine for progressive, liberated women that had just run a cover story about Redford and asked the question all America really cared about, unrelated to plowing of pinyon nuts, the Papagos, or Means. “While I’ve got you on the phone -- is Robert Redford really six feet tall?” The sullen savage who is my foster brother – his mother said so – waxed more cheerful. “John, I’ve stood next to him and I’m here to tell you that he isn’t an inch over five-foot-nine, and when you see him up close, he’s even uglier that you are.” I instantly became a fan of Redford without defecting from the collateral Means family. That’s what’s known as journalistic objectivity. Redford, incidentally, made a very pro-AIM movie called “Incident at Oglala” that shows he is capable of objectivity or at least doesn’t hate Indians. The FBI did not like this movie. I have recommended several of Redford’s other films, notably “The Great Waldo Pepper,” to my tutorial students, and Redford is still the greatest Gatsby who ever appeared on film. The fact that the real Gatsby, a stout, balding Prussian immigrant named George Remus, was uglier than Redford, Means, and Koster all lumped together did not hurt this phenomenon. Scott Wilson, however, was the best actor in the movie, seconded by Sam Waterston -- but Redford will always be the Greatest Gatsby. My role as a referee in the Obama-Redford showdown is now established. Let’s look that this point-by-point. Redford blasts the White House for freezing smog-generation restrictions. The Environmental Protection Agency wanted to lock in tougher restrictions, which Redford says could have prevented 12,000 premature deaths per year, but the White House put the restrictions on ice because tougher pollution control could interfere with the creation of new jobs. Point to Redford. Any jobs that require ignoring pollution standards are jobs we don’t need. Anybody who has been to Los Angeles knows what smog is like. The air is brown. We don’t need that. About 40 years ago, I lived in a cluster of towns where “jobs” were so much more important than clean air that people could only get five years out of the paint job on a car, and on bad days your eyes and throat burned. I wrote an article about the poor air quality and the high rate of cancer in surrounding towns and, perhaps not coincidentally, the worst of the factories was shortly shut down. Air quality affects all Americans. Jobs invention affects mostly people who fudged in high school and don’t have any skills to fall back on. Keeping that faction happy while we melt the polar caps and send asthma sufferers to the hospital is obscene and ought to be illegal. Redford blasts the State Department for giving a preliminary green light to Keystone XL, a pipeline that would carry crude oil from Canada to Texas refineries. Stating in advance that my daughter once had lunch with Hillary and Chelsea Clinton when my daughter was at Princeton, and I presume Hillary Clinton paid for that lunch, I must reluctantly give the point to Obama and Secretary of State Clinton. Most Americans can’t just go out and junk their cars and replace them with hybrids or electric local-mobiles, so we’re going to need that oil for the next 10 to 20 years. The recent nuclear plant explosion in France indicates once again that nuclear energy is not a good option. The Germans hope to phase out nuclear plants by 2020, which is a perfect vision. The French don’t appear to like them much either. Don’t even ask about Japan. Oil is a temporary but vital necessity, and we’re better off getting it from politically stable and sensible Canada than we are from the madhouse of the Middle East. Redford also criticized tentative offshore oil drilling in the seas off Alaska’s North Slope, a fishing ground where an oil spill could contaminate the ocean, kill marine mammals, and poison the fish that people on both sides of the Pacific Rim eat. Point to Redford. Offshore drilling when we have access to land-locked oil is gratuitous and might convince people to shrug off the alternatives to oil that we should be exploring. Point to a reader: I was asked to investigate a statement by a Chinese official that Jimmy Carter had rejected solar panels from the White House. The statement I quoted was incorrect. Carter, in fact, had approved the solar panels at the White House. Ronald Reagan had them taken down. The Chinese then took the solar panels and put them in a museum in Beijing. The panel displayed in a show featuring Rutgers-trained environmentalist Lester Brown was indeed a solar panel from the Carter White House, but it was Reagan who had removed the panel. Brown, as I said, pretty much lost the debate with the Chinese reporter when she played the race card by asking how Brown could deny the Chinese the right to petroleum-based electric power when it was predominantly the United States that was killing the planet. However, this could be a catastrophic victory if the Chinese and the other developing nations take a grudge match attitude toward pollution and pollute because we pollute. The Chinese are smart people and they will probably back off from that once they industrialize a little more. Japan used to be notorious for pollution. Now, except for accidents, Japan has a good environmental reputation. Let’s strike a compromise all around. Plainsmen like Redford and Means have to realize that unlikely oil leaks into their favorite trout streams or mustang and buffalo pastures are a considered risk worth taking if we can buy oil from Canada rather than places where people dance in the street when Americans are murdered. Obama should know that no job that relies on continued or expanding air pollution or ozone contamination is acceptable to the neighborhood, the nation, or the world. People around here have to understand that they should go solar if possible, plant shrubs or trees instead of grass, and eat less red meat because grain-fed or grass-fed meat costs 15 times the environmental impact of rice or beans or other vegetables. People who want to eat more fish also have to understand that offshore drilling isn’t good for the fish or the marine mammals. Would Ridgewood have lost the use of the ground floor of Ridgewood Village Hall a couple of weeks ago if the uphill slope had been covered with trees and shrubs rather than asphalt and lawn? It’s hard to say. Nothing would have stopped flooding from Tropical Storm Floyd in 1999, but Hurricane Irene’s impact probably could have been minimized with more trees, fewer greenswards, and a whole lot less asphalt. As if President Obama didn’t have enough troubles. Robert Redford recently added to the burdens on the man in the White House by condemning some of his environmental decisions. This is critical stuff. In the popular imagination, “liberals” are all tree-hugging daisy-sniffers and “conservatives” are all Bambi-blasting Willie-killers, so if Redford’s message is taken seriously, Obama won’t have a leg to stand on. Redford hedges the nation’s bets by saying he would still vote for Obama, but the collateral damage is still potentially huge. Now it’s time to own up to outside influences. My first contact with Robert Redford was when, as a college student, I walked out of a movie theater and almost tripped over him embracing an actress while a camera, light, and sound crew captured the moment for posterity. I don’t know what movie this was for, but both their voices sounded theatrical and they both had classic, striking features but wore a lot of makeup. I wasn’t enough of a buffoon to mug for the camera, so I meandered away and never signed a release. Ten years later, I heard from Redford again through a hostile critic: Russell Means. Means, America’s “baddest” Indian, was then teetering between a couple of semesters in prison for events that also took place on camera, including the burning of the public buildings of Custer, South Dakota. The burning of the buildings actually took place while Means was inside the court building punching it out with eight police officers, the judge, and the bailiff in one of the greatest explosions of macho pugilism ever seen in the West. All of it was filmed and shown by National Geographic and, more recently, by PBS. The lands where the Papago Indians harvest pinyon nuts had been threatened with gang plowing, which means that you hook a logging chain between two huge bulldozers and drive them through the pinyon groves 50 yards apart, ripping out trees that take a century to grow back. The Sierra Club took umbrage at this catastrophe of ecological idiocy and called for Redford, who showed up at no cost to help publicize, and possibly thwart, a real disaster in the making. The Papago activists called in Means, who also had a certain stage presence. Most of the newscasters were women. Means found himself surrounded by women who were not in the least interested in him while Redford was visibly available. Trouble lurked ahead as Means, sticking out from among the vertically-challenged Papagos at an ominous, glowering six-foot-three, watched in disdain and envy as Redford dominated the press conference. “John, it was downright disgusting,” Means later told me. “Redford was on camera for half an hour, and them women couldn’t take their eyes off him. They never looked at me once. Finally, some young lady was nice enough to come over and say ‘And now, before we shut down, is there anything, you’d like to say, Mister Mean?’” Means took the microphone and cursed at Redford and the Sierra Club. The microphone then bleeped and the rest Obama v. Redford: Splitting a decision Letters to the Editor Dear Editor: On behalf of Mayor Joseph Monahan and all the members of the Midland Park Borough Council, I would like to thank the recreation board, the recreation coordinator, and all the volunteers who made our community’s Sept. 11 commemorative service possible. In Midland Park our sense of community is one of the strongest. Our lifestyle is one of the very best. We are fortunate to have the finest volunteer fire and ambulance services, police, department of public works, and other volunteer organizations that make Midland Park what it is. I would also like to say that the real credit for our success as a community belongs to our residents, who are neighborly, outgoing, and friendly. Let us not forget that 10 years ago, America witnessed a horrifying attack against our ideals, our people, and our peace of mind. America refused to be threatened in the face of terror, and we found ourselves in a society that has not allowed evil to prevail. The best way to show respect for the victims of Sept. 11 is to carry out our American duty to practice democ- Expression of appreciation racy. When we remember the events of 9/11, we must remember the first responders, police officers, and firefighters who responded to the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, those who went in to save lives, but gave their lives in the process. We remember the first responders from every corner of our nation who came to Ground Zero in the days after to lend their strength, skills, and support. And we must remember the innocent people -- the husbands and wives, the parents and children, and the entire families who were torn apart the day the towers fell. Nancy Cronk Peet, Borough Council President Midland Park It is the policy of the Villadom TIMES to have a signed copy of letters to the editor in our files. Please fax a signed copy to (201) 670-4745 or drop a signed copy in the mail to Villadom Times, P.O. Box 96, Midland Park, NJ 07432. Signed letters may also be dropped off at our office located at 333 Godwin Avenue in Midland Park.