Dogtown and the MSNBC Boys

Earlier this month, we had lots of fun with the recent MSNBC promo that featured MSNBC anchor Rachel Maddow, directed by noted flood control expert and occasional filmmaker, Spike Lee:

As we discussed at the time, it’s certainly a strange visual metaphor for a openly left TV network, which is deeply in bed with radical environmentalism. Not to mention, as Joel Kotkin wrote last year at the Politico, “Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Interior Deanna Archuleta, for example, promised a Las Vegas audience: ‘You will never see another federal dam.'”

So it was nice to see Mary Katharine Ham deftly satirize the MSNBC promo at the Daily Caller last week, recreating Spike’s camera angles and Maddow’s polypropylene construction helmet, but standing in front of a more down to earth building project:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwVUHHFgalE

I very much doubt MKH intended it this way, but juxtaposing the two videos actually sums up California perfectly. The state builds excellent dog parks — there’s quite a huge affair in Emeryville, in the suburbs of San Francisco, or at least there was when my wife and I used to walk our dog there about ten years ago. But when it comes to dams, California’s residents would much rather demolish them than build them:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlaYJhLylzw&feature=player_embedded

And then they wonder what’s causing the next rolling blackout in what has become, at least when it comes to getting its electricity, a giant Potemkin village of a state.