This month, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm made news by laughing when asked what âthe Granholm plan to increase Oil production in Americaâ was.
The laugh didnât seem particularly Funny to average Americans who donât own a Tesla or who arenât ferried around on the federal governmentâs dime like Jennifer Granholm is. It also indicated our Energy secretary wasnât particularly concerned about the cost of the particular form of Energy that hits home most for families â Oil.
Well, now you can have the last laugh â literally â while having your worst fears about Granholmâs priorities confirmed.
A recently unearthed 2018 MusicVideo by the environmentalist group Coltura â which says on its website that itsâvision is a gasoline-free America by 2040 or soonerâ â featured Granholm and others talking about how âfossil foolsâ (get it?) need to be left âin the ground.â
Granholmâs appearance in âGasoline, Gasoline (The Worldâs Aflame)â flew under the radar at the time, likely because Granholm hadnât held office in over seven years when it came out. (She was a two-term governor of Michigan from 2003 until 2011.)
However, NPR mentioned her participation during an interview with Matthew Metz of Coltura that aired Monday afternoon on âAll Things Considered.â
The piece discussed how Coltura was now helping write legislation when, âjust a few years ago, its main tools in that fight were things like break-up-themed Music videosâ such as âGasoline, Gasoline (The Worldâs Aflame)â and âperformance art.â
âWe did whatâs called the Ghosts of Gasoline â actors that were dressed up in their white bodysuits with hoses and nozzles,â Metz told NPR.
Oh, thatâll sway us. NPRâs Camila Domonoske noted, at the end of the four-minute piece, that the song âfeatured a cameo from a woman with a blonde bob, enthusiastically lip-syncing along about the urgent need to give up gasoline. That was Jennifer Granholm, better known today as the secretary of Energy.â
Unsurprisingly, it went mostly unheard at the time. Colturaâs YouTube channel has only 56 subscribers, and the Video has garnered a bit fewer than 50,000 views as of Wednesday morning.
Most of those views seem to have come since NPR revealed Granholmâs participation, however; an Oct. 16 snapshot of the YouTube page, cataloged at the Internet Archiveâs Wayback Machine, shows only 5,915 views.
Those 44,000 other people probably wish they hadnât seen it, either, unless they wanted a bad laugh.
The song begins with a synthesizer and beat straight out of a 1980âs Pet Shop Boys song. A sample in the same vein plays over it: âThe love affair with gasoline is ending / Soaring costs ⌠forcing drivers / Abandon gas-powered, gas-powered.â
And then the actual singing begins, which makes you wish theyâd stuck with the samples: âYou took me for a ride, and now weâre lost / Iâm choking on your pollution trip / Youâre making me cough / Youâre turning me off / Iâm breaking this relationship.â
The chorus: âGasoline, gasoline / Youâre driving me insane / Gasoline, gasoline / The worldâs aflame / Gasoline, gasoline / I found someone new / Someone better / Better than you.â
âYou fossil fool, I reject your rule / We gotta leave you in the ground,â the song continues, noting that âcountries are racing to phase out gasoline carsâ because, inter alia, our âsea levels are risingâ and âour children are crying.â
In short, this was a lot better when it sounded like a knockoff Pet Shop Boys track.
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If only people had seen this dreck before the NPR interview, they would have noticed Granholmâs celebrity cameo mentioned prominently in the credits for âGasoline, Gasoline (The Worldâs Aflame)â along with environmentalist Bill McKibben. (Greta Thunberg hadnât garnered widespread attention yet, I guess.)
Itâs pretty hilarious they got both a former governor of Michigan and a well-known environmentalist to appear in the Video, which represents the antithesis of both coolness and listenability.
Itâs less Funny when you realize we now have an Energy secretary who appeared in a Video about leaving Oil âin the groundâ and âracing to phase out gasoline cars,â particularly given high Gas Prices and Granholmâs infamous cackle.
Just in case you forgot the moment, Granholm was on Bloomberg TV earlier this month when host Tom Keene noted the soaring price of gas.
âIn Sturgis, Michigan, it is $2.89 a gallon,â Keene said. âI guess thatâs better than in California. What is the Granholm plan to increase Oil production in America?â
She laughed, collected herself and said, âThat is hilarious.â
âWould that I had the magic wand on this,â Granholm continued. âAs you know, of course, Oil is a global market. It is controlled by a cartel. That cartel is called . And they made a decision yesterday that they were not going to increase beyond what they were already planning.â
Granholmâs laugh was one among several âlet them eat cakeâ-isms by members of President Joe Bidenâs administration that signaled they werenât taking inflation seriously. The president himself had waved off inflation as temporary during the spring and summer, and White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain retweeted a Harvard economist who called supply chain issues a âhigh classâ problem.
This is to say nothing of the fact the administration has been waving plenty of wands to stopOil production. On day one of his administration, the president canceled the permits for the Keystone XL Pipeline project. Biden has tried to suspend new leases for drilling on federal lands and ax permits already awarded in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve.
In other words, the âGranholm plan to increase Oil production in Americaâ was made clear in a wretched MusicVideo three years ago: donât increase it, leave it âin the ground.â
If only one of the 5,000-odd people who watched that awful Video before she became Energy secretary could have warned us.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
