Political Cage Match: Professor versus Puffed-Up Congressman

Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska)

Last Friday historian Douglas Brinkley testified before the House Natural Resources Committee on the topic of preserving the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The Republicans, of course, have been trying for years to open it up to oil drilling. Brinkley, whose latest book is The Quiet World: Saving Alaska’s Wilderness Kingdom, 1879-1960, argued that preserving one of the last truly wild places in the U.S. should trump helping the oil companies make more money.

Alaska Rep. Don Young (who had skipped most of the testimony) broke into Brinkley’s presentation, calling the historian by the wrong name and saying his testimony was “garbage.” Then the two had a hilarious shouting match. IMO, Brinkley came out the winner, but judge for yourself:

Young: If you ever want want to see an exercise in futility … That side has already made up its mind and this side has already made up its mind. I call it garbage, Dr. Rice, it comes from the mouth –

Brinkley: It’s Dr. Brinkley. Rice is a university – I know you went to Yuba [a community college] and you couldn’t graduate.

Young: Well, okay, I can call you anything I want if you sit in that chair. You just be quiet! You be quiet!

Brinkley: You don’t own me. I pay your salary.

Young: I don’t own you, but I can tell you right now—

Brinkley: I work for the private sector, you work for the taxpayer.

Next, committee chairman Doc Hastings interrupted and lectured Brinkley. But Young was still “pissed right now.”

Finally, Brinkley said he was surprised to

hear a congressman today say there’s nothing in his district. It’s boring. It’s flat. It’s not exciting. I don’t know a representative who doesn’t love their district. Every state in America’s landscape is beautiful if you love it. But some people love money more than their homeland or where they live, and I’m afraid that that’s why this fight has to keep coming up 50 years later, we’re still trying to tell people the Arctic refuge is real. It belongs to the American people.

On Friday evening, Brinkley appeared on The Ed Show on MSNBC to discuss his experience with Rep. Young.

A week later, the Congressional cage match is still causing controversy. At the Minnesota Post, Don Shelby, a friend of Brinkley’s wrote a column about the dust up.

Brinkley told me he knew that Congressman Young, at another hearing, had waved a walrus penis bone at Mollie Beattie, the incoming chief of the Fish and Wildlife Service. Brinkley may have read the Rolling Stone article about Young that quotes the congressman as saying, “Environmentalists are a self-centered bunch of waffle-stomping, Harvard-graduating, intellectual idiots.” The quote continues, “[They] are not Americans, never have been Americans and never will be Americans.” ….

Brinkley should not have been surprised that Congressman Young showed up late and missed the bulk of the historian’s testimony. Young is often cited as the congressman missing more votes than any other member of the House. Brinkley would have known that Young was the co-sponsor, with discredited Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens, of the bill to pay for the infamous “bridge to nowhere.”

Brinkley told me: “Everyone knows that Young is just a menacing blowhard. He has a history of being rude, he browbeats and he’s snotty toward anyone who cares about the environment.”

I asked Brinkley if he was surprised that Committee Chair Doc Hastings took Young’s side and continued lecturing the historian. “No,” said Brinkley. “They are tied together at the hip. They are both oil company factotums. They are a tag team.”

Young claims that Brinkley is just milking the incident to sell books. Brinkley told a Houston TV station

that his students applauded when he walked into class. “I have received now hundreds and hundreds of emails from people all over, I’ve not received one negative one,” he said. “I’ve had my entire Rice University and including Texas conservatives cheering me on for standing up to his bullying tactics.”

I’m not usually much of a fan of Brinkley’s, but I have to applaud him on this one. I don’t care if he’s doing it to sell books. Greedy, incompetent politicians like Don Young need to be revealed for what they are: pigs at the trough.