Remember those dot-to-dot drawings you did back in second grade? Just by connecting a few dots, a clear image of something that was invisible just moments before would emerge right before your eyes.
Well, apparently a key piece of equipment in the Karl Rove/Frank Luntz bag of tricks is some kind of gizmo that deprives otherwise astute adults of the ability to connect a couple of dots. It almost sounds like a long-lost Looney Tunes cartoon -- the one where Wile E. Coyote orders an Acme Anti-Dot-Connector in an effort to thwart the Roadrunner.
With the Bush energy bill now in front of Congress, the anti-dot folks are once again out in full force. But the Roadrunner always found some pretty simple ways to make the Coyote's schemes backfire, and sometimes we can, too.
Remember Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton's characterization of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge as "flat, white nothingness" -– a claim that smoothed the way for Congressional support to drill for oil there, despite overwhelming support from the American people to protect wildlife habitats? Here's your chance to help reconnect the dots. Tell everyone you know to check out the brand-new streaming video feed from the caribou calving grounds in the Arctic Refuge , where you'll see amazing live images of animals in this unique terrain. One look and nobody could ever fall for the "white nothingness" dot-disconnecting rhetoric again.
Then there's the challenge of toxic mercury. Nobody's in favor of raising the levels of mercury in our bodies. The problem is that people's eyes sometimes glaze over when you try to explain how the mercury in their body from too many tuna sandwiches connects back to our government's laxness about regulating coal-fired power plants.
Working with our colleagues at Greenpeace, we've found one easy way to help people get a handle on the mercury issue -- by letting them snip a lock of their hair, send it in for testing, and find out just how much mercury has found its way from the power plant pollution into their own bodies.
If enough people spread the word, it could just be the antidote for the anti-dots.