Anti-Mountaintop Removal Lockdown Depicted on Fox’s “House”

By scott parkin

Anyone watch Fox’s “House?” The medical profession’s answer to “CSI” and “Law and Order” with a cantankerous jaded doctor played by Hugh Laurie.

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On this week’s episode, the opening segment is a lockdown by environmentalists to a bulldozer on a mountaintop removal site. Their messaging is a bit on the cheesy side (”The Only Clean is the Green”, “What Would Nature Do”). The interactions between activists and workers is a bit cliche and, IMHO, inaccurate (”I gotta feed my family”, “You’re children need to breathe clean air”).

But a major network (owned by Ruport Murdoch no less) airing TV episodes about coal, mountaintop removal, lockdowns and direct action fascinates me.

Pop culture is starting to depict what those of us in the streets and frontline communities do and that change isn’t all about what’s going on in the Beltway or on Wall Street.