Douglas takes a new angle to fishing
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Published: May 4, 2008
The opening day of the Vermont trout fishing season isn't exactly the best time of the year to get into any heavy fishing action. In no way does it resemble, say, the opening day of the deer season when spirits are high and more bucks are shot than on any other day of the season.
Conditions are far from ideal on the trout opener and this year was no exception. The waters were high and muddy on opening day a few weeks back.
But that didn't stop a dedicated core of fishermen who would no sooner miss the trout opener than the deer opener. These men and women and, yes, children, just want to get out and be a part of the opening day tradition.
These are the folks I would categorize as some of the most dedicated anglers you can find in Vermont.
So it was such a pleasure to see a photograph of our very own governor, issued by the Fish & Wildlife Department, out there on opening day.
His presence, along the river bank demonstrates that Gov. James Douglas is very much like the rest of us. Just like the rest of us, he likes to "get down" on opening day and wet a line.
But handle that nasty worm? Sorry. Gotta have a special assistant take care of that business.
That's right. The governor went fishing on opening day and never even got his hands dirty.Wish I could have seen the tape, but I didn't. But a fellow editor/writer at the Herald saw the WCAX-TV footage and told me how intrigued he was to see the governor reel in his line, swing it back to a person with a Vermont Fish & Wildlife logo on his shirt and have it baited with a fresh worm.
"I laughed out loud," said Darren Marcy, who writes a weekly outdoor column for the Herald. "I don't know the politics behind things, but I know that it looked silly for the governor to be out trout fishing and having someone else … baiting his hook for him."
That someone else, according to a trusted source, was almost certainly Wayne Laroche, the commissioner of the Vermont Department of Fish & Wildlife.
Now, with all of the stuff going on these days, with high gas prices and a war and tough economic times, a fair person might argue that this is just another case of nit-picking. What's the big deal?
Here's the big deal. I think this speaks volumes about what is wrong with the people we elect to lead us. We get had, again and again, by people in elected office who pretend to be something they are not.
If the governor can't bait his own hook, even as the cameras are rolling, then he is clearly pretending to be a fisherman. The question is, why? Why pretend to be something you are not?
I'll tell you why. It looks good. It makes him look like he's one of "us." And looking good, saying the right things and acting "the part" is all that matters, when it comes to getting elected and re-elected.
And it's not just Douglas, a man who never met a photo opportunity he didn't like. The phonies can be found everywhere in politics and public office.
We elected a president who struts around like a cowboy who just jumped off the meanest bull in the rodeo.
This is the man who landed a jet on an aircraft carrier four years ago, proclaiming "Mission Accomplished" in Iraq. This is the same guy who sent thousands of fine American servicemen off to die or to come back forever broken. This is a man who wrecked a country — for no reason other than his own hubris. This same man hid behind his daddy's Congressional connections to avoid serving in Vietnam.
Washington is full of phony sunshine patriots, Chickenhawks like Dick Cheney who seem to love making war plans, but who did everything in their power to avoid serving in Vietnam.
Our elected officials go on the record opposing homosexual rights, then get caught in gay encounters. We have governors and senators who talk tough on prostitution, then get their faces plastered on Page One for shacking up with hookers. Phonies, hypocrites, liars.
Our own Vermont Legislature is overpopulated with bored yuppies and rich trust-fund hippies who wouldn't know a day's work if it slapped them in the face. Why should they care about us poor slobs?
What the hell has happened to us?
I'll tell you what happened. We got lazy. We got complacent. And we ended up getting in Washington and in Montpelier just what we deserved.
Meanwhile, politicians, at least the great majority of them, just keep on truckin', smiling and lying their way to their next paycheck.
So don't be a bit surprised, come the second Saturday in April, 2009, when the governor arrives at the water's edge, once again, pretending to be something he is not.
Contact Dennis Jensen at dennis.jensen@rutlandherald.com
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