The Rant Room

I get upset about a lot of things and then I have to tell someone about them. This is the place where I do that.

Now, if you're like me, you might also have something to say to the world and I encourage you to let everyone know your opinion. But first, think carefully and then read this:

Re: KILLER BEES

Dear Sam Donaldson;

I wonder if you are aware of the extreme threat posed by killer bees to the fabric of our society. It seems that you are not, or else you would be doing more shows about it.  Your news organization has a responsibility to stay attuned to developing social change and to keep the general public informed of it.  You may be on TV and perhaps you feel a certain cultural invulnerability, protected by your ray guns and your cathode tubes; perhaps you even imagine yourself a trend setter in your far away up close light show.  However, you are also a journalist, made of flesh and blood.  And while your affiliates have been devoting time to stories such as crop circles on the British Isles, the problem of killer bees is ignored or misrepresented, despite the fact that it is much more relevant to the American situation. As I understand it, crop circles affect a relatively small circle of crops, whereas killer bees are invading an entire continent.  

Think about this--Domesticated honey bees have been bred for docility and an even temper, yet they will still fly willy nilly into car windows, creating fear and panic among passengers, and reckless driving among vehicle operators.  Oftentimes the grisly outcome is a head-on collision with oncoming traffic.  What do you think will happen once the wild, undomesticated killer bees have taken over the hemisphere? I am not here to debate the true disposition of the killer bee.  However, this new kind of bee has a reputation for irritability, irrational behavior and violent outbursts among the rest of us.  I have observed that our people do not deal well with the unexpected or the unfamiliar.  Perhaps we are more successful when we know the truth of our situation.  If only for this reason, I believe that it is your civic responsibility to prepare our population for the inevitable.

Consider this also--In a few more years, the killer bees may completely replace our domesticated honey bees through a program of interbreeding and territorialism.  The blind white larvae, the pill fat queen and the never ending digestion/excretion of the workers around her--all that familiar stickiness to be replaced by drier, honeyless insects.  Beekeepers will lose interest in swarms of Africanized bees, fruit growers will not be able to use them to cross-pollinate their plants and the American honey industries will be devastated..  An entire social structure dies.  In this future, perhaps only European honey bees will remain free to roam the fields without fear of genetic contamination.  They say that Japan was protected from conquest by their "tsunami"or tidal waves and now they manufacture automobiles and electronics.  So you see how weather, isolation and the pattern of animal movements continue to have a profound effect on our sense of security and on our development as a nation.  There is a message for the future in the smallest of details.  You might consider this truth as you formulate your journalistic philosophies, your economic news coverage and editorials.  

Am I arguing for the genetic purification of honey bees?  Actually, no. I am not a fruitcake.  But there are consequences of the intermixing. No more honey bees on cereal boxes, no more honey bee poetry,either.  American honey bees will be as bison.  The stories of our unique inter-species dependency, our connection to their matriarchial societies, our fascination with their sweetness and their stingers will be overwhelmed by our horror at what they've become.  And then perhaps by something else.  It is all unavoidable. And yet, it continues unreported. I feel this is very wrong.  It's a coverup, but a coverup run by ignorance and lack of imagination.  

Sam, I hope you understand that I would not be complaining to you unless I respected you as a caring and attentive journalist.  However, I do feel you have dropped the torch, as it were, in your pursuit of trendier subject matter like war and politics.  As a fellow recorder of history, I must insist that you take notice of the forces which most directly shape and very possibly destroy the world we live in.  The killer bee is one of these.  

Thank you,

ALW

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