Back in the days of the Journal Newspapers (R.I.P.) we had a young reporter who, among his multiple talents, was able to, despite being a little too young to have lived through the glory days of George Carlin, repeat, in correct order, all of the no-no list from Carlin’s famous Seven Dirty Words (that you couldn’t say over the airwaves) routine.
(Ah, those were the days. Think we’d all get fired it anyone tried that now.)
Were Carlin alive and living in Arlington today, there’d be another no-no word in the lexicon. Apparently now “conservation” is verboten in polite society.
“Conservation”? As in ecology, as in saving things, as in caring about things?
Yep. Gone-zo.
The Arlington gub’mint has changed the name of its longstanding Neighborhood Conservation Program to “Arlington Neighborhoods Program.”
Why, you might ask? Because, according to the press release announcing the change, the word “conservation” “often evokes a negative connotation and suggests exclusivity.”
Uh, OK. These folks can wiggle their wokeness into just about everything, it seems.
Perhaps the real answer for the exorcism of “conservation” is because the local government — for good, bad or in between — is about to embark on the demolition of single-family zoning. It’ll be free-range development going forward, so there’s zippo chance much of anything is going to be conserved.
Perhaps “Neighborhood Bulldozing Program,” while technically correct, was not quite the feel government leaders were going for.
Anyway, grab the popcorn. The people who are just finding out about the Missing Middle housing proposals are not happy about them, but they may be too late party to stop this virtue-signaling, developer-enriching choo-choo. We’ll see.
GOP ONE-UPS DEMOCRATS ON OUTREACH: The Arlington County Democratic Committee for the past few years has found success with its “Beyond Arlington” effort, which provides local resources to Democrats in competitive races downstate and in the other, lesser states of our shaky union.
But now at least one member of the Arlington County Republican Party is taking things a step beyond . . . beyond the sea, in fact.
Arlington GOP spokesman Matthew Hurtt recently checked in from, of all places, Warsaw’s capital of Poland, where he and other staffers from The Leadership Institute were doing training exercises to help conservative candidates make their case in upcoming elections across Europe.
Hurtt evoked the names of Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and Pope John Paul II in the effort.
Side note: Never been to Poland, but would like to get there one day.
- Scott McCaffrey