SUMMER RERUN SEASON STARTS EARLY THIS YEAR ON TELEVISION: ‘Mercury Poisoning Is Back:’ Colbert Freaks Out Over EPA Deregulation.
Joe Biden became president in 2021, which was not that long ago, but according to CBS’s Stephen Colbert, repealing Biden-era EPA regulations is a public health crisis of grave consequence. Colbert made the remarks on Thursday’s edition of The Late Show, where he also expressed his lack of interest in the financial cost of regulations.
Reaching for the alcohol, Colbert declared, “Trump also, and I want to be fair, is ruining everything. For instance, his EPA, his Environmental Protection Agency, announced plans to repeal dozens of the nation’s most significant environmental regulations, including more than two dozen protections against air and water pollution. I mean, just even hearing that stresses me out. I need a drink, man. There you go. Oh, my god. That’s water.”
Moving on, Colbert added, “The EPA is also going to overturn limits on soot from smokestacks and restrictions on emissions of mercury. Mercury poisoning is back, baby! Pretty soon your horoscope’s gonna read, ‘This month, Mercury is in retrograde and also in your brain. Blaaaaaaggahhhaa.’”
Colbert’s source for this was a New York Times article that included a note that the soot and mercury regulation was a Biden rule, but Colbert made it seem like Trump was turning the clock back to the 1870s.
Or maybe 2003, when James Lileks wrote: “For all these accusations to work, you have to believe that Republicans want poisoned water. You have to believe they drink different water than everyone else. And, of course, they do:”
Doubt it? Switch parties. Join the GOP, and see what happens: cheerful clean-cut uniformed men show up the next day, and take you off the city water lines. They’ll connect you to the special Republican water system that crosses the nation, supplying pure clean perfect water to GOP households. You can get it without Fluoride, too, as a sop to the Birchers and Goldie holdovers.
And there’s more! They’ll also install special GOP “screens” for your windows — they’ll trap airborne pollutants as small as three molecule across. You’ll also have access to rich, satisfying Republican sunshine, which tans you twice as fast — just look at Bob Dole! — and you’ll enjoy even-tempered Republican weather all year long. This is why Republicans don’t care about pollution, or bad water, or the ozone layer, or global warming: for all practical purposes, they’re not living on the same planet as the rest of the people, so they don’t care at all what happens to you.
True! All true! Invite a Republican over and hand him a glass of water. Watch him avoid drinking it — sometimes they spill it, sometimes they just say “I had water earlier today, thanks anyway” — and sometimes they sneak a little sponge out of their cuff, put it in their mouth and pretend to drink. Oh, they’re clever.
Well, if this isn’t true, then perhaps . . . maybe . . . there’s another side to this arsenic debate. Is it possible? Could it be?
Nahh, that’s just crazy talk.