QUESTIONS FOR ROBERT REDFORD: The Outsider nytimes.com
[ Well, I've been sort of trying to stay out of politics here, but . . . this short little bit is too pithy to resist . ]
Apathy?
Yeah, it's like people skim right past all news about the ozone hole and the wetlands being drained and junked by developers and the Glacier National Park in Montana that could have no glaciers by midcentury. They skim past the fact that the reservoirs along the Colorado River will be more than a third lower in the next 20 to 50 years -- in our lifetimes! My God! The Colorado River is drying up in our lifetimes!
How does the Bush administration get away with it?
They are very, very shrewd in couching it in patriotism. Nearly every statement that comes from this administration includes the phrase ''the American people.'' Every time I hear that phrase I just substitute ''industrial interests.'' Look at the people who are calling the shots -- you've got Cheney, you've got Rove, you just look at the murderer's row there, and the handwriting is on the wall.
If Dick Cheney were an animal, what would he be?
Coyote? The group of 'em, a pack of coyotes -- tricky, cunning, making sure they take care of themselves but doing it in a wily way, making sure they never get caught.
So many of the figures you're talking about come, like you, from the West. Why doesn't coming from that environment produce a stronger desire to preserve it?
Part of the West still has this outdated philosophy of manifest destiny: what we can take, we deserve. |
