Presidential Fuel Intervention

There's nothing like getting an intervention from the President of the United States. Two-hundred-80 million Americans getting the tough truth that we're Jones-ing for oil and we just have to stop. That's a pretty good ole kick in the pants. I'm just wondering if the President really thinks that his suggestion of filling up your tank with switchgrass is the answer. Is switchgrass the methadone of our 21st century gas dependence?

Switchgrass has quite a few names. One is Tall Panic Grass. I wonder if President Bush, once an oil man himself, may be giving some of his old cronies a case of the tall panic. And you thought Kenneth Lay was giving them heartburn. It's such a Marlboro he-man industry. There's nothing remotely rugged about harvesting a drought resistant ornamental grass. It's all so Queer Eye. Switchgrass is also known as Wild Red Top, a name that sounds an awful lot like a crazy neighbor with a bad dye job or something you smoke in a pipe that leads to a whole different kind of addiction.

If the first step is admitting you have a problem, let me echo the President's sentiment. The country is addicted to oil. Just not me. I'm cycling to work. I abstain from heating my house by wearing enough layers to be mistaken for the bride of the Michelin Man. I tell people I like sitting in the dark because it's way more romantic. While that may all make me seem patriotic, I'm just cheap. Although I am hooked on the heart-clogging polyunsaturated lubricant that makes cookies chewy and my candy bar gooey.

I'm not so certain how seriously my fellow citizens are taking the Commander-in-Chief's warning. It's a bad sign that switchgrass didn't even make the list on the ultimate arbiter of the public's interest - the Google search engine top five queries. The top vote getter? The poker playing, hot-momma no-nonsense New York Mets pitcher's wife Anna Benson. If the Energy Department could just harness some of the heat generated by her web pictures, we'd lick that whole energy crisis without even going nuclear.

Actually, Mr. Bush got this all grass backwards. If he was going to go all aggie on us, picking a tall panicky grass was the wrong battle plan. Mr. Bush has to make this a real turf war. He needs to launch an all out attack on something most Americans can relate to. Crabgrass my fine sir, crabgrass. Like our parents and grandparents collecting metal scraps during the "nothing to fear but fear itself" era, he needed to harness our fear of ugly sod. Who wouldn't get behind recycling the bane of suburban living into the force for the modern day suburban troop transport vehicle the SUV?

Until then I know we're all going to have to search our souls to kick the oil habit. But, while waiting for that we may have to do a little of that 12-step rehab thing and turn to a higher power like solar or wind. And that means we'll once again be dealing with a fuel Washington sure knows about, alot of hot air.

By Stephanie Becker