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| February 22, 2007 Editor’s Desk by Aaron Selbig, insurgent49 It’s been a warmongering week here at Insurgent Headquarters. By now, most of you have probably heard about The Great Tennessee Ad Scandal of 2007. If you haven’t, here’s the Reader’s Digest version: While cooking up a national advertising campaign to lure visitors to the Volunteer State, the Tennessee Department of Tourism decided draw attention to their 1,800 miles of mountain biking terrain. Naturally, to pull of such a thing, you would need a good photo. And they found one. Here it is:  Nice, ain’t it? The only problem is that the photo, which was published in several national outdoorsy magazines at a cost to the Department of Tourism of $75,000, is of a 1997 mountain biking trip IN ALASKA. Here’s the original photo, which appeared in National Geographic ten years ago:  (The credit for busting Tennessee on their theft, by the way, goes to Tim Woody of Anchorage, who operates a local bicycling blog. Thanks, Tim.) So … how sad is it that Tennessee has to resort to stealing photos to sell their state? My first reaction to this scurrilous attack on Alaska’s wilderness sovereignty was outrage. I was all ready, as a matter of fact, to put in a call to Governor Palin and suggest an immediate military assault on Tennessee. It would be easy. All we’d have to do is call up our friends over at Elmendorf Air Force Base (the ones who aren’t presently deployed to Iraq, of course) and ask them to send a couple of bombers down to Tennessee to blow the hell out of the Jack Daniels distillery. After we have successfully knocked out their entire bourbon economy, it’s time to destroy Tennessee’s seat of power. That’s right … Graceland. We’ll bomb Graceland, the Jack Daniels distillery and the Country Music Hall of Fame, thereby rendering the entire region useless. Then we send in the infantry. Sounds a little rash, you say? Well, consider the facts: Tennessee has knowingly, with malice and forethought, co-opted our mountain biking fun. Tennessee is so lame that they have to steal photos to make their state seem cool. Tennessee’s governor, Phil Bredesen, has ties to Al Qaeda. So, there you go, Alaskans. Ready to gird yourselves for war? Well, okay … maybe not. On second thought, maybe the correct response to this scandal is one of self-examination. Are we really any better than Tennessee? After all, they may have spent $75,000 to lie in an ad campaign, but the city of Anchorage recently blew $80,000 on Big Wild Life. Now who’s dumber? Aaron Selbig is an activist and media junkie who resides in an undisclosed location in downtown Anchorage. He is the winner of a 2006 Alaska Press Club award for Best Editorial Writing, host of KUDO 1080 AM's 'The Aaron Selbig Show' and a co-founder of Insurgent49. Aaron may be contacted at editor@insurgent49.com 'Editor's Desk' appears on insurgent49.com every Thursday. |
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