Wolves in Central Park!

February 16, 2012 6:40 PM

Hey New York, take your Central Park and shove it! (via)

“What I’m trying to accomplish,” [Rep. Kyle Johansen, R of Ketchikan] said, “is to basically make a point of the hypocrisy of — and don’t take offense — those East Coast folks who write a lot of checks to shut down Alaska, while in their own backyard, Manhattan has been turned from a pristine wild island supporting an amazing Muir web of life to having only Central Park left as a green belt. And even Central Park has been radically changed.”

posted by rosswald (41 comments total)

I'm for this. The oil drilling is killing Manhattan.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 6:46 PM on February 16, 2012 [6 favorites]

These guys must not realize that Central Park is already a completely sculpted landscape. There's nothing natural about it.
posted by keep_evolving at 6:48 PM on February 16, 2012 [4 favorites]

Sounds good to me. Let Alaskan tax-payers (and all 50 states) chip in for the up-keep of Central Park.
posted by Flood at 6:49 PM on February 16, 2012 [14 favorites]

This is an attempt to burn a straw man made out of bricks and wearing a dress...Central Park hasn't resembled wilderness in about 400 years.
posted by notsnot at 6:51 PM on February 16, 2012 [2 favorites]

I'm glad the state houses of AK and WY have the time and money to waste on such stupid resolutions.
posted by birdherder at 6:53 PM on February 16, 2012 [3 favorites]

Hey Republicans, quit your bullshit for fuck's sake. Do some actual legislative work. Seriously. You guys are morons.
posted by Admiral Haddock at 7:03 PM on February 16, 2012 [7 favorites]

I'm all for letting it return to its natural state. A pristine sun dappled landscape where wild muggers frolick, you can hear the wild calls of "yo kid, i got that sens, I got that white" through the hollows and anyone 12 year old with a buck can buy a tall boy of bud off an old guy with a cooler.
posted by Ad hominem at 7:05 PM on February 16, 2012 [5 favorites]

Republicans are making me wish we had a crazy dictator. At least when there's a crazy dictator, you only have to keep your eye on one guy. Every which way I turn now, it's stuff like this or someone telling me to hold aspirin between my knees for birth control.
posted by millipede at 7:06 PM on February 16, 2012 [3 favorites]

OK, I give in. Absolutely no drilling or oil pipelines in Central Park.
posted by DU at 7:10 PM on February 16, 2012 [5 favorites]

I saw a raccoon by the 102nd street transverse the other night.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:19 PM on February 16, 2012

When people who live in Alaska complain about federal interference, I like to point out that Seward didn't keep the receipt, but we do have the canceled check.
posted by benito.strauss at 7:26 PM on February 16, 2012

Let's turn it back into swampland.
posted by Threeway Handshake at 7:26 PM on February 16, 2012

I had no idea the great people of Wyoming and Alaska want their states to be more like New York City.
posted by one_bean at 7:26 PM on February 16, 2012 [1 favorite]

"I can see the Russian Tea Room from the park!"
posted by ericb at 7:28 PM on February 16, 2012 [9 favorites]

Oh, shit. They're on to our gay-loving, ivory tower plan to shut down Alaska. Because of freedom. Who leaked?!
posted by chasing at 7:34 PM on February 16, 2012

When people who live in Alaska complain about federal interference, I like to point out that Seward didn't keep the receipt, but we do have the canceled check.

I'm totally disappointed that that doesn't have a memo line with "Alaska" written in.
posted by strangely stunted trees at 7:37 PM on February 16, 2012 [1 favorite]

This fool does not understand the meaning of the words 'point' or 'hypocrisy', or the concepts of 'city', 'national park' or 'sanity'.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 7:55 PM on February 16, 2012

I'm reasonably sure Central Park was never a "wilderness." Well, sure, when there was no city there, before it was New Amsterdam. But you could say that about any urban area if you go back far enough.

But Central Park was originally mixed-use land with villages and houses and so on. It was carefully designed to look like it is a bit of pristine old Manhattan stuck in the middle of the city. Even those famous rocky hills were planted there at great effort.
posted by clvrmnky at 8:01 PM on February 16, 2012 [4 favorites]

I'm glad that, no matter where you travel in the US, you can rest assured that the best and brightest in charge.
posted by feloniousmonk at 8:04 PM on February 16, 2012 [3 favorites]

Yeah, clvrmky has it exactly right. Central Park is completely artificial. Before it was built, that area was basically a swamp. Even the soil had to be trucked in from New Jersey because what was originally there was too crappy to support plants.
posted by neroli at 8:12 PM on February 16, 2012 [1 favorite]

Threeway Handshake has it: Turn it all into swampland. But it will never equal the morass that is the Republican party.
posted by BlueHorse at 8:13 PM on February 16, 2012 [1 favorite]

Nah, the rocky hills are Mahnattan Schist, exposed by glacier movement in the last ice age. Those at least are natural.
posted by Ad hominem at 8:18 PM on February 16, 2012 [2 favorites]

These idiots out West somehow always forget that the federal government owns the vast majority of the land in their states and that they enjoy a disproportionate share of federal tax dollars.

Indeed, without various forms of subsidy and federal tax transfers, it would not be economical to live in many of these "Real America" spots.
posted by Mid at 8:31 PM on February 16, 2012 [4 favorites]

Even the soil had to be trucked in from New Jersey because what was originally there was too crappy to support plants.

And they still haven't stopped resenting New Jersey for giving them the soil.

Meanwhile, I'm just wondering at this point if the Republican party has given up on intelligent and thoughtful people because the best they can get now is 'able to breathe without external assistance'. The lack of intelligence here is raw and staggering.
posted by mephron at 8:35 PM on February 16, 2012

Alaska is not so much a state as it is America's (heavily subsidized) Ice Colony.


Their flag is pretty bitchin', though
posted by steamynachos at 8:41 PM on February 16, 2012

I think the time for Republicans is approaching where they are going to have to split their party. There will be something like the Retro-Nixon/Reagan/Eisenhower Republicans and the We are crazier than outhouse rats neo republicans. I actually mean it when I say I feel sorry for the few remaining republicans from the Rockefeller/Nixon era. How would you like to have to aver that this current group is your braintrust??? ouch.
posted by jcworth at 9:19 PM on February 16, 2012 [1 favorite]

Why are they bringing Central Park forward as an example? The federal government already does this in Washington, DC; complete with the "we know best, and aren't going to ask for your input at all" attitude. They've been doing this for hundreds of years, and have no plans to stop anytime soon.

Hell. My neighbor's front-lawn is a national park for no goddamn reason. It's the size of my kitchen, and because of some weird power trip that Teddy Roosevelt went on, is exclusively controlled and "maintained" by the National Park Service. DC isn't even allowed to put a bus stop along the curb, because the NPS literally refuses to respond to any requests made by the city.

Believe me. The tyrannical folks in the Federal Government aren't from the urban areas on the East Coast.

Oh, and Alaska had better learn to keep its mouth shut, lest the rest of the country wake up to the fact that it's the most subsidized state (by far), and has a state government that is so flush with cash that it pays rather substantial dividends to its residents in lieu of taxation. I love Alaska, and will passionately make a case for the federal subsidies that it receives, including the much-maligned bridges to nowhere (one of which was a bad project, and would have surely died in the planning process, while the other was a legitimately worthwhile project that would have opened up new tracts of land for development near Anchorage's cramped downtown). However, the oldschool Alaskan politicians like Ted Stevens knew when to keep their heads down in order to keep the subsidies rolling. Johansen's playing a dangerous game here...
posted by schmod at 10:06 PM on February 16, 2012 [5 favorites]

According to Wikipedia, 10% of the population of Anchorage, the largest city in Alaska, is employed by the US military or an immediate family member of someone who is. (As an aside, I would love to know what percentage of Alaska residents are employed by the Discovery Channel.)

It is an incredibly beautiful state though, that is certainly undeniable.
posted by feloniousmonk at 10:06 PM on February 16, 2012

However, the oldschool Alaskan politicians like Ted Stevens knew when to keep their heads down in order to keep the subsidies rolling. Johansen's playing a dangerous game here...

Yeah well, what can you expect from these welfare queens when they've sucked on the government's teat all their lives, common sense? That they expect decent, hard working people in the rest of America to support their exorbitant lifestyle and they start complaining when they have do something in return is jsut typical of the breed.
posted by MartinWisse at 10:40 PM on February 16, 2012

The problem with Manhattan is that it is so completely foreign in concept to what so many Americans ever experience. Even if they visit, they stay carefully insulated from reality--Which is a shame, as that's expensive and you miss the most fun.
posted by Goofyy at 10:45 PM on February 16, 2012 [1 favorite]

In other news: Wildlife Activists Follow Lone Wolf’s Trek Into California
posted by homunculus at 11:52 PM on February 16, 2012

The problem with Manhattan is that it is so completely foreign in concept to what so many Americans ever experience. Even if they visit, they stay carefully insulated from reality

I meet more people from London or Paris than I do from the rest of the US. For a long time I did meet couples, or three or four guys, in from middle America. When I met them in bars they would be polite for a while, talking about shows, or the subway until about 45 minutes in. They would give each other a look and I knew what they were going to ask, they would ask me where I was on 9/11, was I in the city? What was it like? Did I lose anyone? How could I explain what it was like on that day. Seeing a smudge against the sky. A part of our city destroyed. New York, as the greatest place on earth, mourned and moved on as the rest of the country wallowed in fear. How could they possibly understand.
posted by Ad hominem at 1:29 AM on February 17, 2012 [2 favorites]

I think about that as little as possible, and honestly, I don't think of 9-11 when I think of NYC. I used to work downtown, but that was decades ago. I was in Germany at the time of the attack, and I haven't been back to the US since. I have not been steeped in the culture of "post 9-11".
posted by Goofyy at 3:46 AM on February 17, 2012

How about Van Cortlandt Park. It is a might bit more natural than Central Park, and it even has a golf course.
posted by sciencegeek at 4:22 AM on February 17, 2012

Goofyy: "I have not been steeped in the culture of "post 9-11"."

9/11 was undoubtedly a pivotal moment in the lives of any New Yorker who was in the city that day. However, the post-9/11 melodrama that affected most of the rest of the country didn't really catch on in NYC. At least as far as I can tell...
posted by schmod at 6:48 AM on February 17, 2012 [2 favorites]

Y'know, even if nobody else does, I will cop to thinking this is actually a pretty funny little piece of political satire from the Republicans for once. Of course it misses the point, among other things because Central Park is not a breeding ground for threatened caribou species, but it gave me a chuckle.
posted by whir at 9:03 AM on February 17, 2012

I will say that the regionalist attitude that claims that New York is the greatest place on Earth is a big part of why a lot of people out west get tired of hearing about the East Coast. Unlike those legislators I'm a big believer in environmental protection, management, and regulation, but the recent debacle in the Portland area around the EPA's power play over Bull Run water definitely tells me that a government that's based 2500 away doesn't always know what's best for a region.

For the record, the Pacific Northwest is the greatest place on Earth.
posted by OverlappingElvis at 9:58 AM on February 17, 2012

Pffft!
posted by ericb at 10:37 AM on February 17, 2012

For the record, the Pacific Northwest is the greatest place on Earth.

Shut up! IXNA ON THE ECORDRAY! There is no Pacific Northwest. And if there is, it is a dreary place. The spirit of the damned is alive in Portland. Move along. Nothing to see, here.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 11:53 AM on February 17, 2012

And Seattle is really a pit of brimstone with strange rock spires coming forth, and those aren't trolley horns and ferry horns and aircraft noises, those are the screaming of the damned!

I hope they bought it.
posted by mephron at 2:15 PM on February 17, 2012

I think ad hominem is right that NYC, having directly experienced the 9/11 attack, has long since processed it, put it in perspective, and moved on (well, Giuliani tried to milk it for eons, but that's a different story), as people who experience tragedy rather than just hearing about it kind of have to, to be able to function, while much of the rest of the country instead has fallen for the Republicans' cynical usage of the event to create fear and conformity and to justify their acceleration of creeping fascism. I have friends & family who witnessed it, and they don't obsess over it, and I've almost never even thought about it in subsequent years when I've visited there.

You guys trying to keep the lid on NW "Paradise": a bit late, when as far back as '89 I heard the pilot on a flight I was taking from Seattle back to Boston wax regretful over the intercom to us passengers about having to leave The Best Place On Earth. (And, anyway, I'm reasonably sure that The Best Place On Earth, wherever that might be, isn't in the USA.)
posted by Philofacts at 6:17 AM on February 18, 2012 [1 favorite]