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November 08, 2007 WEDNESDAY, Oct. 31
Yes, we're going to start off another week talkin' 'bout the Superferry. Quit your bitching—the boat will be running soon enough, and then it won't be in the news anymore. But in the meantime, we've got elected officials to denounce! Now a week ago, the state Senate voted on the big "compromise" bill that grants a special exemption to Hawai`i Superferry, Inc., allowing it to operate while the state conducts an environmental review. All three of Maui's senators—Roz Baker, J. Kalani English and Shan Tsutsui—voted no, possibly because down deep they're principled human beings. But over in the state House, we've got a different story. Only Maui rep Mele Carroll (D, 13th District) opposed the bill, while representatives Joe Bertram, III (D, 11th District), Angus McKelvey (D, 10th District), Bob Nakasone (D, 9th District), Joe Souki (D, 8th District) and Kyle Yamashita (D, 12th District) all voted to let the Superferry get special treatment. Normally I'd say something pithy and vengeful at this point like, "You people know what to do come election time…" but the election's not for another year and by then even I will have forgotten about this travesty.
THURSDAY, Nov. 1
And now, as if I didn't have anything better to do, I get to play a round of Let's Defend a Self-Indulgent Fool's Right to Say Despicable Slurs in Private! Yes, kids, I'm talking about Dwayne "Dog" Chapman, who survived bounty hunting and nearly getting tossed into a Mexican jail only to watch the A&E Network put his immensely popular Dog the Bounty Hunter show on hiatus. The reason, as most of the Free World now knows, is because the National Enquirer got a hold of a heated, surreptitiously recorded conversation between Dog and his son Tucker in which Dog regularly drops the N-Bomb while telling Tucker that he can't date some African-American chick because there's too great a chance said African-American chick will find out Dog likes to drop N-Bombs, and then record an instance or two of Dog dropping N-Bombs and give said recording to the Enquirer. Got it? Good. Of course, A&E had to toss Dog off the air—for a time, at least—because there are sensitive (read: advertising) issues to consider. Never mind that the recording is a private conversation between two more or less consenting, sentient adults—Dog used the word nigger in public! Draw and quarter him! Who does he think he is, Dave Chappelle? By the way, If you really want to talk offensive, listen to Chapman's first sentence in the recording, in which Dog tries to say that his argument with Tucker's girlfriend has nothing to do with race: "Don't care if she's a Mexican, a whore, whatever."
FRIDAY, Nov. 2
Will someone please remind me why Halloween had us all so damned worried? According to today's Maui News, something like 30,000 people partied on Front Street in Lahaina on Halloween, and the Maui Police Department arrested 24 people. That's right—two dozen arrests. That's it—you can find more hell-raising at a church bingo game. That means the cops busted 0.0008 percent of the Front Street crowd. Hell, they arrested 19 people in Kihei, and I don't recall that place being listed as Mardi Gras of anything.
SATURDAY, Nov. 3
Of course, the cops arrested just 20 people last year, so I guess that'll be cause for the county Cultural Resources Commission to break the whole thing down next year.
SUNDAY, Nov. 4
On the same day when 50 residents braved torrential rains to stand outside the Hoapili Hale in Wailuku and protested the state Legislature exempting Hawai`i Superferry, Inc. from environmental law, the Honolulu Advertiser reported that a key provision in that exemption—posting federal whale monitors on all Superferry voyages—won't actually happen. In an email to Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale National Marine Sanctuary co-manager Jeffrey Walters, Chris Yates of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said the feds can't spare anyone to stand watch on the Superferry for at least a year, and maybe not even then. "I also want to make clear that we have been very straightforward with everyone who has asked about this process," Yates added in the email, which was excerpted in the Advertiser. "I fear that the bill as written will raise the expectations of the public and media that these requirements will actually result in some action, which they will not. I will need to explain to them that everyone we spoke with knew in advance that these measures were not feasible."
MONDAY, Nov. 5
Well, Governor Linda Lingle signed the Superferry bill today, which is kind of ironic because I just figured out what all this Superferry legislative nonsense was about: Respect. See, according to state House Speaker Calvin Say, who's quoted in today's Honolulu Star-Bulletin, our esteemed legislators were victims of Big Media and really had no choice. "There was a campaign by the media," he said. "[T]he surveys, the radio talk shows and also the negative statements that we are really so anti-business." So our elected representatives chucked our own environmental laws into the dumper—just this one time!—because somehow (this still remains unclear) the Superferry people got the idea they didn't have to do any environmental review before starting even though they really did. Well, after this, no one can say Hawai'i's a bad place to do business. In fact, if I ran a business—especially a big, well-funded business with lots of lobbyists—I'd absolutely come to Hawai'i. Well, the Superferry bailout certainly sends a new message: Hawai'i is a great place for business because our state officials are pretty dumb.
TUESDAY, Nov. 6
See? Everybody wins!
Anthony Pignataro took a year to read Thomas Pynchon's 1,085-page Against the Day, and will now spend the rest of his life trying to figure out what it was about. MTW
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