Possum Philosophy: The art of denying mistakes

By ROBERT CAHILL/Columnist

Is it just me or does it seem that anyone in or employed by our federal government will go to any length, including the occasional outright lie, to avoid admitting they were wrong? Now no one likes being embarrassed by mistakes. But they happen. If you are human you will make them occasionally. And yes, almost anyone will do a little bit of white-lie butt-covering if they figure it will work. But most of us, particularly if faced with a minor faux pas, won’t just out and out lie about it.
However, I do believe the U S Government Employees’ Manual of Conduct, Clause 1, Subsection A, apparently states, ”as an employee of the federal government, it is impossible for you to be wrong or make a work-related mistake. Should this impossible event actually occur, the first response should always be that the questioner is mistaken and did not understand. That failing, pass the blame on to some underling. Should you be the lowest class of employee in your department, pass the blame on to some mythical information officer. Such as, “Oh I’m sorry, I did not understand your question at first. Unfortunately, I cannot provide you directly with that information. You need to speak with our newly appointed information officer. I believe his name is Mr. Buddy Joe Jones.”
“Oh, I am so sorry, I failed to mention that Mr. Jones is unavailable at this moment to meet with you.”
Now technically speaking, this is not lying. Since you stated you are not sure (when you said I believe his name is) you made it plain that you didn’t know definitively. However, should B. J. Jones come around and actually be the information officer, you will certainly ask him to look into this matter, whatever this matter may be.
I feel certain any one of you reading this, who has ever had to deal with some inept and stonewalling clerk, will agree that their training manual reads exactly as I said.
Now what has me all ticked off is the recent admission that tomatoes were, as I and my fellow tomato lovers already were aware, not guilty of spreading disease among our populace. I just knew that could not be right. It appears now to be a bunch of hot peppers evidently raised in Mexico. Still government officials could not come right out and say they had made a mistake that cost tomato growers here millions of dollars in lost crop sales. No indeed. They apparently jerked out the old standby manual on handling mistakes instead.
According to an article written by Annys Shinn published in the Washington Post newspaper (http://www.washingtonpost.com), “‘However, FDA and CDC officials have not absolved tomatoes as a possible cause of the outbreak and are considering the possibility that both tomatoes and jalapeños have spread Salmonella saintpaul.’ For more than a week, investigators have been holding and testing shipments of jalapeños coming from Mexico, the source of most fresh jalapeños that are consumed in the United States. ‘It is clear to us tomatoes do not explain all of the clusters, do not explain all of the cases … and jalapeño peppers themselves also do not explain all the clusters and all the cases,’ said Robert Tauxe, a deputy director at the CDC. Acheson said it is possible that tomatoes tainted with Salmonella saintpaul initially made people sick, then contaminated jalapeños that were grown either on the same farm, or handled in the same packing shed or warehouse. In tracing the source of tomatoes that sickened people, investigators have found points in the distribution chain where tomatoes and jalapeños crossed paths, Acheson said.”
Hmmmm, guess a poor country boy like me is the only one who thinks maybe, just maybe, the peppers were the problem all along? I don’t think so. In that same article, a spokesperson for the United Fresh Produce Association was quoted as saying that there were no tomatoes in the marketplace from the areas that were shipping produce (can you say peppers) at the time the outbreak started.
Of course, I can somewhat understand this. No doubt the one that made the first mistaken assumption about where the problem started and why is responsible for millions of dollars in lost crops. Wonder what his manual says about that?
I still say that if our government funneled one-tenth of the money a month from our spending in Iraq to our agricultural programs and assisting our farmers in various ways, we not only would not have to worry about the crops we ate, we could be exporting the excess. We could even do so at a greatly reduced cost so that our poor neighbors in Central and South America could afford to feed their people on healthy foods as well.
You’ll just have to excuse me. For the government to even hint that the finest food-stuff known to mankind, the tomato, was even the least bit bad for you and me has me boiling mad. Thank goodness our local tomatoes are available now to soothe the savage beast (or maybe it’s more of a savage tomato worm) within me.
Eat more ‘maters folks. They’re good in salads, on sandwiches, straight from the garden or even fried while still green. You may can them, freeze them (though not my favorite), even sun-dry them. You can fry them. Broil them. Bake or stuff them. I even recently saw a recipe for tomato pie. In 1936, that famous Virginia botanist George Washington Carver printed a guide for growing tomatoes that included more than 100 recipes for them (see http://plantanswers.tamu.edu/recipes/carvertomato.html) and every single one of them sounded good to me.
Remember, “MATERS RULE!” At least the ones from here in the Southern Highlands of Virginia do.

A freelance journalist, Robert “Rocky” Cahill writes regularly for the News & Messenger. His Possum Philosophy column publishes in each Saturday edition.