Who knew Carrot Top was so green?

by Brian McKim & Traci Skene on September 25th, 2008

Apparently, he was green before green was cool. As was Amazing Jonathan. And Penn & Teller. And Sammy Davis Jr. And Shecky Greene was the first of all of them to hunker down in one location. And his name was “Greene!” That makes him the firstest and the greenest!

Bette Midler has announced (to firm up sagging ticket sales, perhaps?) that she is “quitting touring to save the planet.” So she says in a Sky News article in which she justifies hunkering down in Vegas for two years (at $6.5 million per year) by saying that she will no longer be humping around her act in 14 tractor trailers.

Of course, she could’ve just slimmed the act down to an acoustic set.

Instead, she takes a deal from Casear’s (a time-honored tradition for 50 years now) and claims the moral/environmental high ground. And, in the process, she implies that anyone who continues to travel around the country (from Pearl Jam to The Jonas Brothers to the road company of “Cats”… or Ron White?) are eco-criminals for not settling down in one location and letting their publics come to them.

And, of course, she fails to factor in that, in the old days, when she was humping her road show around in all those fossil-fuel-burning “lorries,” she was bringing the show to them, one city at a time. Now, however, anyone wanting to see her show must fly to Vegas (or drive across the desert) to see it.

Is she a gas hog/fossil fuel hypocrite now? We haven’t run the numbers. Does it matter? No. What does matter is this incessant and rather embarrassing tendency for folks to climb over one another to claim green superiority. And a goofy willingness on the part of an unquestioning press to grant it. It’s starting to resemble a religion or a cult.

How long before the adherents to this cult survey the landscape and begin to “re-examine” the model? How long before all the traveling acts are seen to be polluting far out of proportion to their contribution to society?

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