Aren't Facts True?

(C) 2010 Stan Spire


The TeeVee ad blares:

"Act now and receive a free gift."

Funny. I always thought gifts were free. I mean, if someone gives me a gift, I don't have to pay for it. If the giver tried to charge me a fee, I would kick their ass.

I'm always suspicious of the redundant adjective. If they tell you that a gift is free, then something else in the deal ain't.

Controversy on the other side of the lake in the Green Mountain State. Entergy, the corporation that now owns the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant, has been running slick TeeVee ads. Vermont Yankee wants to yank the taxpayers by letting it keep operating the plant twenty years beyond its present license. Problems: part of a cooling tower collapsed back in 2007 and nuke waste keeps piling up with nowhere to permanently store it.

But don't let those details stop a VY spokesgal, a young professional cutie, to go on in TeeVee ads about how she wants people to know the truth, the facts, about her company. If if someone doesn't agree with her, she still wants them to know "the true facts."

If the old VY nukie gets a license extension, I have a question:

Three Mile Island or Chernobyl?