T Boone Pickens on Daily Show

Eating Crow

In the past, I’ve said some… unkind things about Mr. Pickens and his ‘Pickens Plan‘ for energy independence. I want to apologize for that. I think I didn’t quite understand until this past week.

You see, I thought he wanted to convert our cars to run on natural gas. Natural gas is what Pickens has more of than pretty much anybody else in the USA. So when I saw his commercials this year on the television, and when I went to his newly created (at the time) site, that’s what I saw.

Well, sometimes we can look right at something and not recognize what it is we’re seeing. That’s what happened to me. I saw what I was expecting to see. I saw my own fear, reflected back at me through the filter of my prejudice.

Watch the short excerpt below from Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show. You’ll see and hear T. Boone Pickens plainly say exactly what he wants, and why. It’s not the cars he wants on natural gas – it’s our huge fleet of trucks. He wants the cars powered by electricity from all those wind farms.

(It would help to reduce confusion if he would review his site, link above, and clarify things a bit. He STILL has that natural gas Honda Civic shown there… just sayin.)

Anyway, this makes alot of sense. Check it out:


Mr Pickens, I apologize. It’s so easy these days to be cynical about rich guys saying they have a plan to help America. The country is literally run by folks like that who truly do not have our best interests at heart.

Look at Paulson. Look at Bernanke. Look at all the little Bushies.

Mr. Pickens, you might be a rich gas man. You might be a ruthless corporate raider.

But you are not cut from the same cloth as those guys I just mentioned. You, sir, are better than they are. And I believe you have one of the best plans for our energy future.

I am Jon, eating crow. And you know what? Cooked with natural gas, crow tastes pretty damned good.

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