Tuesday, the Sun came out with a magnificent double page spread
about dolphins. It included a ballot people can send in to vote on the issue of releasing
the dolphins and a dolphin sea-side park. The poster-adds for the Sun, plastered all over
Sydney, read: "Imagine a dolphin sea side park where you could play with the dolphins
in the sea!"
Wednesday, the Sun came out with a second
two-page spread and another ballot. Sue said they were getting swamped with mail bags
full of ballots to free the dolphins. The entire Greek Community of Australia voted to
support the freeing of the dolphins!
So today, when the dolphins arrive in numbers not seen here for
years, the press goes wild. The Channel 7 News Helicopter is out there right now, filming
them. I watch the commotion on TV. Dolphins everywhere, gracefully playing before the
famous Sydney Opera House with the people of Sydney watching from the air, from shore,
from boats.
It truly is a phenomenon. An aging, grinning ferry captain says, "I ain't seen so many dolphins in the harbor in all my years. It's a blessing, it
is."
"Do you think they watch TV or read newspapers," the
interviewer chuckles.
"Well, ya don't know, eh? Maybe they got some way of knowing
we're all thinking about em, eh?"
I call Sue. She answers the phone with a flat hello.
"Hey, hey, hey! Since when does the Sun sell papers to
dolphins?" I ask, "Do you think they'll be coming to my lecture tonight at the
Australian Museum?"
"Oh, Hi Rick." Sue sounds gloomy.
"What are you up to?"
"Just sitting here staring at an enormous heap of mail bags. My
Editor is making me open them since it's all addressed to me."
"I should think that would make you happy. What's wrong?"
"I just got a call from Nancy. It was a huge gush of verbal
abuse and frankly it's...I don't.." She is close to tears.
"Sue? Is this really Sue the Iron Hearted Pussycat? What on
Earth did Nancy say?"
"Oh she was pissed because of one line - "this is a
one-man show." It was really unfair because I did try to interview Nancy and Angela
but couldn't get together before press-time. If they wanted to be included in the articles
they could have come to see me ahead of time."
"Listen, Sue, Nancy called me days ago, long before your
article, and said she and Angela had withdrawn their energies from the project because of
personality problems between Estelle and me. And Estelle told me the same thing last week.
Other than sitting around talking to each other and having some friends sign petitions,
what have they done you could write about?" Sue does not reply.
"Hell, Sue, you have personally spread 8 MILLION petitions
around Sydney. Look at the mail bags again. That's what has come from your efforts. Of
course other people participated in the project. Maybe it was a goof to call it a
one-man-show, but there's no cause to abuse you. If the public wants a one-man-show and if
the show sells, fine. Sell it that way. People would have to be astonishingly stupid not
to realize a whole lot of people support any successful "one-man-show".
Certainly Nancy and the others helped, what do they want? Their picture on page 1? Or the
dolphins out of the swimming pool?"
"I tried to interview Tony Gregory at Project Jonah," Sue
sounds a little more together, "but he refused to comment except to say you went
about the whole thing all wrong and should have stuck to scientific issues."
"He wouldn't know the difference between a moral and a
scientific issue if it bit him in the ass," I joke. Sue snickers. |
