Don Blankenship: Seventh scariest person in America

Massey Energy CEO is a really bad dude 7

The venerable print magazine Old Trout was recently relaunched with a splashy issue on "The Thirteen Scariest Americans." I was asked to write up the scariest American from an environmental point of view.

The choice was not difficult. The scariest polluter in the U.S. is Don Blankenship, CEO of Massey Energy. The guy is evil, and I don't use that word lightly.

The issue is out now. (Look for it on a newsstand near you!) The folks at Old Trout have given me permission to publish an expanded version of the piece after a suitable period of exclusivity. So watch for that at the beginning of December.

In the meantime, check out three things.

First, there's this longish New York Times piece on Blankenship from Sunday. In the usual style of mainstream reportage, it is studiously neutral in tone, woefully downplaying the environmental destruction Massey does and the thuggish tactics Blankenship has imposed. But you can get a pretty accurate general picture of the guy.

Second, watch this short clip from Bill Moyers' PBS special Is God Green? At the end there's an archival clip of Blankenship from 1984. To me it's absolutely mesmerizing. I've probably watched it 50 times. The sunken, lifeless eyes, the flat affect, the utter lack of empathy ... like I said, it bespeaks psychopathy. I've shown it to a bunch of other people and they don't find it quite as chilling as I do, so your mileage may vary:

And finally, please visit I Love Mountains and do whatever you can -- even if it's only sending a letter to the editor or signing an online petition -- to end the horrifically destructive practice of mountaintop-removal mining.

David Roberts is staff writer for Grist. You can follow his Twitter feed at twitter.com/drgrist.

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  1. KathyF Posted 4:59 pm
    24 Oct 2006

    Why do these guysalways have mustaches?

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  2. yankee Posted 12:40 am
    25 Oct 2006

    On the webThanks for pointing this out. You know, if you go to their website, you can actually download the article about the 13 scariest Americans.

    yankee (nyc.theoildrum.com)

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  3. Heidi Posted 11:22 am
    25 Oct 2006

    I'm with you on this one...He's definitely creepy.  I would love to hear the rest of that clip from 1984; I imagine he had all sorts of scary things to say...

    http://groxie.com

    DIY Environmentalism

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  4. Ammonite Posted 2:09 am
    26 Oct 2006

    I Love MountainsI followed the link in the article, never expecting to find that in the US they decimate real, proper mountains just to extract coal. I am very, very shocked to think that anyone could conceive of such an idea, nevermind a nation that could condone such activity. Shame on you America for allowing this and I sincerely hope that the campaign is successful. This is something that should be publicized worldwide as it is possibly the most shocking exploitation of the earth's natural resources I have heard of yet.

    "Only when the last tree has died and the last river has been poisoned and the last fish has been caught will we realize that we cannot eat money."

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  5. Tod Brilliant Posted 5:33 am
    26 Oct 2006

    Kathy nailed it. .One cannot trust another human, male or female, who sports a moustache. Yes, there are exceptions, but they are few and usually found on Halloween.
    I'm with you on the video. It creeps you out because it's not often we see humans without souls.

    " . . . because the world doesn't matter anymore if you don't have the strength to go ahead and choose something that's really true." - Julio Cortazar

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  6. Nucbuddy Posted 1:34 pm
    31 May 2007

    Mustache politicsTod Brilliant wrote: Kathy nailed it. One cannot trust another human, male or female, who sports a moustache.

    http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Moustache
    If you spot anyone with a moustache, chances are that they are planning to take over the world.

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  7. doubleduty Posted 6:05 am
    27 Oct 2008

    Anti-regulationI'm 47 years old and because of my social views such as abortion I have always voted as a Republican. But I am getting sick and tired of the Republican politics of anti-regulation. They want to us to believe that the free market system will always correct (regulate) itself. It simply is not the case. We have pharmaceutical companies that will take a perfectly good drug that might cost 15.00 per month and take it off the market and replace it with one that is suppose to be better. They then will charge you $300 a month or more. Unregulated insurance companies have more say over your treatment than your own doctors. And now the deregulation of Wall Street has almost sent our economy into a depression. Deregulation has allowed all of our manufacturing jobs to go to Mexico and Asia. Meanwhile we allow no limit to illegal immigration so they can take even more jobs from us. We have to wake up and realize that no one gives a damn about us. And no one ever will not Republicans or Democrats. No one in government or big business gives a damn about the destruction of Appalachia and the poisoning of our land our water and our homes. If we are ever to be honest with ourselves we know that eventually there is only one way to fight this and get some attention. If all that the IRA ever did was to protest and sign petitions where do you think that they would be right now?

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