http://www.oldtroutmag.com/docs/13ScariestAmericans.pdfSCARIEST INSURER:
Edward M. Liddy / CEO, Allstate
His sinister solution? Effectively blackmail
his customers by threatening to cancel policies unless the
state of Louisiana allows Allstate to drop basic hurricane coverage,
and then try his hand at a little strong-arming by notifying
storm-shocked homeowners they’re going to be jettisoned
unless they also buy Allstate’s auto insurance.
SCARIEST PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE:
Sam Brownback / Senator (R-Kansas)
SCARIEST JUDGE:
Edith Hollan Jones / Chief Justice of the
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit
Such an injudicious temperament would be chilling in any
courtroom, but that it belongs to an Appeals Court Chief Justice—
and a woman who has been on Dubya’s short list to fi ll
Supreme Court vacancies—ought to send up a red fl ag visible
even to the color-blind.
SCARIEST PROSELYTIZER:
Rev. Rick Warren / Author of The Purpose Driven Life
Typically, demagogues who dream of making the whole
world conform to their single, uncompromising vision wear
gaudy military uniforms that give them an immediately threatening
veneer. Rick Warren, on the other hand, favors Hawaiian
shirts decorated with large pineapples. Be very afraid.
SCARIEST SNOOP:
Derek V. Smith / CEO, ChoicePoint
Your loss of privacy and anonymity is all part of what it means to be free. “In a free society--particularly in today’s society--we do not always have the right to anonymity,” explained a ChoicePoint newsletter.
Don’t you feel safer already?
SCARIEST POLLUTER,
Don Blankenship / CEO of Massey Energy Co
Over 100 billion gallons of slurry—a toxic black sludge that results from
coal being washed with corrosive chemicals—are stored often
less than a mile from houses and schools. The slurry seeps into
groundwater and occasionally breaks from behind earthen
dams to fl ood towns below. Locals are regularly showered with
coal dust. The black, brackish public water is unfi t for consumption
or even bathing. Illness is ubiquitous.
AMERICA’S SCARIEST DRUG DEALER:
Billy Tauzin / CEO, Pharmaceutical Research
and Manufacturers of America
SCARIEST ACADEMIC:
Kevin MacDonald / Professor of psychology, California State
University at Long Beach
Once Kevin MacDonald was a fl ower child, a
peacenik, a man who abandoned his Catholicism
during the Vietnam era. Then it dawned
on him: There seemed to be an awful lot of
Jews in the antiwar movement, and it all went
south from there. Today, the 62-year-old tenured
psychology professor is the man that hate groups hope
will make anti-Semitism respectable.
SCARIEST HIDDEN PERSUADER:
Michael J. Petruzzello / Managing Partner,
Qorvis Communications
But the Bushes have had help creating this charade. Michael
J. Petruzzello, managing partner of the Saudis’ PR fi rm, Qorvis
Communications, lobbies Congress on behalf of his client-
state’s interests and trys to whitewash their public profi le
in the media.
SCARIEST BILLIONAIRE:
Richard Mellon Scaife / Oil and Banking Heir
SCARIEST SCIENTIST:
Leon Kass / Member of The President’s Council on Bioethics
In his loopy essay, “The End
of Courtship,” published in Public Interest, he argues for the
ideal woman being a gossamer creature of “self-control, manifested
not only in chastity but in decorous dress and manner,
speech and deed.” Oh, and the irreligious? Don’t trust them
with your car keys.
SCARIEST OPPORTUNITY KILLER:
Richard Berman / President, Berman and Company
Washington D.C. PR man Richard
Berman specializes in creating tax-exempt
front groups—ad-hoc “think tanks” that
sound respectable enough (The Center for
Consumer Freedom, Center For Union
Facts) but in truth spread disinformation through ads, skewed
studies and sham Web sites on behalf of companies such as
Philip Morris, Coca-Cola and McDonald’s.
SCARIEST COP:
Joe Arpaio / Sheriff, Maricopa County, AZ
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