Ted Turner’s clearly ad-libbed after-dinner speech, about humanity’s self-destructiveness, was a confused synthesis of Southern populism, stand-up comedy shtick, and talk-radio outrage.
“I don’t know how many of you have seen ‘Road Warrior.’ It’s a Warner Brothers movie,” he said, unable to resist a plug. “It’s about these real brutish guys…and they’re out in the desert driving around, fighting over the last few gallons of gasoline .… You go back to gangs. It’s like L.A.”
He then offered some Darwinian consolation: “It’s not our fault, ‘cause really all we are is monkeys without tails.” Looking skyward, he added, “Father, I hate to tell you that.”
Turner blamed the government for the nuclear nightmare and offered up a curious theory: “The United States doesn’t want to get rid of nuclear weapons…because somehow they think that we’re going to be able to use nuclear weapons to save ourselves from the starving masses of the Third World when they come to our doorstep.” Returning to the “Road Warrior” theme, he warned, “but that’s not the way they are going to come in. They’re coming across the Mexican border right now .… They’ll come from Saudi Arabia when they run out of oil over there .… The real threat is no longer an army marching on us, it’s people infiltrating us, you know, that are starving. And what are you going to do, shoot ‘em?”1
For the record, according to Chris Kelley, of the American Petroleum Institute, Saudi Arabia has 259 billion barrels of oil available. Or, in other words, with its current reserves Saudi Arabia alone could supply the world’s entire need for oil for almost 11 years.
Endnotes
1 “Brave New World Dept.,” The New Yorker, 23 November 1998, 36.
