2008 Woodie Awards
The glowing elephant in the room
Feature Editorial
Gregory Pratt
Issue date: 9/10/07 Section: Opinions
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Media Credit: Jimmy Doole
The average man is five-feet-nine-inches standing straight. The Sears Tower is 1,500 feet tall. The mushroom cloud that burst over Hiroshima reached a height of 450,000. You look at yourself in the mirror every morning. You see the Sears Tower everyday, living in Chicago. You catch the mushroom cloud on television sometimes, or in history books, but you've never seen one. Imagine that you did. That you saw a cloud miles and miles in the distance and it's dwarfing the skyline. It's dwarfing the clouds. It's dwarfing the world.
Wouldn't that be amazing? Terrifying, really, but you don't think about that. Never have, have you? Why would you pay any attention to the glowing, four megaton 500,000-foot elephant in the room? After all, it's not doing any tricks (well, except for the destruction of cities and the vaporization of men; but that's only "hypothetical," right?) It isn't advertised as an issue on television (maybe if it had a Super Bowl commercial starring Rex Grossman waiting to detonate you'd pay attention.) And it isn't even modern, is it? Nukes are ancient relics, right? (You'll pay attention to 'Happy Days' re-runs and read Norman Mailer but you won't focus on the issues that dominated those days, harumph.) Besides, Ronald Reagan tamed the Russian Bear and therefore ended the threat of nuclear annihilation. Am I right?
More like, you're wrong. That radiated beast still stands.
Atomic warfare was controversial before the first atomic bombing occurred, frenzying during the Cold War. Since? It has fizzled from the public eye, garnering almost as "much" attention as environmental issues do. This is fitting, as it only has the potential to one day destroy the very environment we need to live but ignore on a daily basis.
Not that you've noticed, but that elephant is trumpeting its intention to erupt at any moment. That elephant has made its intentions clear since it was created 62 years ago. 62 years ago! Your grandfather might be older than weaponized atoms and your grandfather will die before atomic weaponry does. While his generation, your parents' and ours have been fortunate not to witness nuclear war, it is inevitable unless the world understands that nuclear weapons are an unacceptable threat to humanity and therefore disregards them. To be sure, an immediate end to nuclear weaponry is hard to envision. What would that encompass? There are questions to ask, too, about the circumstances surrounding such a turn of events.
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Wouldn't that be amazing? Terrifying, really, but you don't think about that. Never have, have you? Why would you pay any attention to the glowing, four megaton 500,000-foot elephant in the room? After all, it's not doing any tricks (well, except for the destruction of cities and the vaporization of men; but that's only "hypothetical," right?) It isn't advertised as an issue on television (maybe if it had a Super Bowl commercial starring Rex Grossman waiting to detonate you'd pay attention.) And it isn't even modern, is it? Nukes are ancient relics, right? (You'll pay attention to 'Happy Days' re-runs and read Norman Mailer but you won't focus on the issues that dominated those days, harumph.) Besides, Ronald Reagan tamed the Russian Bear and therefore ended the threat of nuclear annihilation. Am I right?
More like, you're wrong. That radiated beast still stands.
Atomic warfare was controversial before the first atomic bombing occurred, frenzying during the Cold War. Since? It has fizzled from the public eye, garnering almost as "much" attention as environmental issues do. This is fitting, as it only has the potential to one day destroy the very environment we need to live but ignore on a daily basis.
Not that you've noticed, but that elephant is trumpeting its intention to erupt at any moment. That elephant has made its intentions clear since it was created 62 years ago. 62 years ago! Your grandfather might be older than weaponized atoms and your grandfather will die before atomic weaponry does. While his generation, your parents' and ours have been fortunate not to witness nuclear war, it is inevitable unless the world understands that nuclear weapons are an unacceptable threat to humanity and therefore disregards them. To be sure, an immediate end to nuclear weaponry is hard to envision. What would that encompass? There are questions to ask, too, about the circumstances surrounding such a turn of events.
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