Mugged by reality in a dressing room

Hillary Clinton has big plans.

On Tuesday she told an audience at the Manchester School of Technology in New Hampshire that she's for a "'we're all in it together' society" based on shared responsibility and prosperity.

Then on Thursday, she presented a nine-point "innovation agenda" to high-tech executives in Santa Clara, California, warning them that their success could fizzle out unless the nation spends tens of billions of dollars to improve education and health care.

She predicted that powerful interests will fight her plans. "I have no illusions about how hard this will be," she said.

But while Hillary Clinton was making big plans to gore other people's oxen and share other people's prosperity, she broke down and admitted that an earlier big plan to save the earth from global warming and dependence on fossil fuels has run into an unexpected problem.

"Every woman in this audience knows what it is like to try on a bathing suit in a dressing room with a fluorescent light," Senator Clinton said. "There will not be broad-based market acceptance until we get a better glow from the fluorescent lights."

It's true. The compact fluorescent light bulbs so enthusiastically touted by environmentalists as the savior of the planet could drive a woman to suicide.

Seriously.

And not just in dressing rooms. If you ever have to stay at a Marriott hotel, bring your own lightbulbs, or bring prescription anti-depressants.

On paper, compact fluorescent bulbs look like a great idea. A compact fluorescent lightbulb is said to use 75 percent less electricity than incandescent bulbs, last ten times longer, and generate 450 pounds fewer greenhouse gases from power plants.

It doesn't matter. The temperature in Manhattan could be 120 degrees in December and you're still not going to convince women to be seen looking greenish and splotchy. This is why Revlon gives its foundation colors names like "Cameo Beige" and not "Iguana Pink."

Senator Clinton is right. Compact fluorescent lightbulbs will not find broad-based market acceptance. Until they throw off a more attractive light, they are going in the garbage. And they contain mercury, so this story just gets better and better.

Senator Clinton should remember the dressing room experience the next time she hears herself denouncing the people who oppose her big plans. It may be, it's possible, there's a chance those people are right, no matter how good the plans look on paper.



Copyright 2007


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