SHIP OF FOOLS: Not to mention two magazines in one. As Steve Milloy of JunkScience.com notes, The Nation will be having their annual Caribbean cruise in December:
You can’t imagine the thunderous LOL that emanated from my office last Saturday when I opened my copy of the April 11th issue of The Nation. Yes, you read that right — The Nation, that long-time voice of American comrade-ism.
Casually flipping through the pages looking for some environment-related screed with which to have some good ol’ JunkScience.com fun, I came upon a full-page ad for — get this — The Nation‘s 14th Annual Seminar Cruise to the Caribbean (December 11-18, 2011) with stops in Grand Turk, San Juan and St. Maarten…
Anyway, just two days earlier, The Nation, ran an online article entitled “Six Ways to Green Your Spring Break,” in which readers were advised to:
“Take a “staycation.” Staying at home instead of traveling can be a really inexpensive and relaxing way to enjoy your time off. In fact, it’s probably the “greenest” travel option there is. It will save you money, make less of an environmental impact, and allow you to explore your immediate surroundings.”
But since the crusin’ comrades have already opted for shuffleboarding in the Caribbean over staycationing, they’ll need to get to the port of departure (Ft. Lauderdale) somehow. The Nation gives cruisers the choice of making their own air arrangements or working with the cruise lines’ travel agent. Unfortunately, The Nation‘s Six Ways to Green Your Spring Break” advises to:
“Travel green. Your transportation has perhaps the biggest effect on the environment. If you’re flying, try to avoid flying at night. The contrails of a plane at night have a bigger impact on global warming than those left in the day. As an alternative to flying, you can also take a train overnight while you sleep, carpool, or take a road trip with a rented hybrid car.”
Yet somehow I doubt that The Nation‘s child-of-privilege publisher, Katrina vanden Huevel, will be road-tripping in a rented hybrid from her tony Upper West Side digs down to sunny south Florida.
Milloy asks, “How did I miss the previous 13 cruises and who knew that you could plot against the free world and enjoy all-you-can-eat steamship round at the same time?!”
Au contraire, my capitalist friend, The Nation has a long seafaring history — recall that it was a Nation magazine cruise back in 1982 that P.J. O’Rourke tagged along with up the Volga, in the Soviet cruise ship Alexander Pushkin. During which he wrote the classic line about the passengers on the cruise, “These were people who believed everything about the Soviet Union was perfect, but they were bringing their own toilet paper.”
Speaking of which, while Van Jones is scheduled to be on the upcoming cruise, no word yet if Sheryl Crow will, as well.