Cape Cod Book Reviews

Yet another review of "Cape Wind", the book

"Another of our agreed-upon fantasies is that we do not have a class system in the United States. The Few who control the Many through Opinion have simply made themselves invisible." - Gore Vidal, "The Decline and Fall of the American Empire"

Americans are visibly uncomfortable about the notion of a class system. It seems antithetical to our status as a democratic society and the enduring Horatio Alger myth of upward mobility. Authors Robert Whitcomb and Wendy William, however, are not demure about addressing the taboo subject head-on. Their "Cape Wind: Money, Celebrity, Class, Politics, and the Battle for Our Energy Future on Nantucket Sound" (PublicAffairs, $26.95) makes clear that "them that got" travel in rarefied circles, wielding rolodexes and club memberships that give them dizzying access to power.
Perhaps the most shocking instance of NIMBY-ism rests with the Kennedy clan., specifically that liberal lion Ted Kennedy and his nephew, alleged environmental advocate and, to some, certified windbag, Robert Kennedy Jr. Threatening and cajoling his colleagues in Congress, business contacts and fellow Massachusetts Democrats, Kennedy's efforts to deep-six the project are truly Herculean

The book centers on the machinations of the Cape Cod elite - a group whose tangled network of familial and social alliances call to mind an Edith Wharton novel, but whose WASP-y belligerence could have been lifted from "Caddyshack" - to derail a promising proposal to build a wind farm off the coast of the resort community. Written in a pithy style, the book is a revelatory examination of the intersection of politics and class. Emerging from their cocoon of privilege to wage an all-out war on those who would dare erect wind turbines in their sailing grounds, a cabal of American aristocrats and Wall Street tycoons inadvertently made it perfectly clear to anyone following the battle following the battle on the Cape that on the Cape that  

...Practical matters aside, when the Cape Wind opponents do launch their opening salvos, the viciousness of their attacks on Gordon and his fellow Cape Wind supporters is truly staggering. Their aggressive campaign pulls out all the stops. Under the auspice of a grassroots organization called the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound, the wind farm opponents quickly launch an all-out public relations war in which hyperbole quickly crosses the line into out and out mendacity.

Among their outrageous contentions were accusations that the turbines pose a danger to whales, a quote falsely attributed to the Sierra Club describing turbines as "Cuisinarts of the air," and a bizarre insistence that the Sound is the economic hub of New England (a claim that conveniently ignores, say, Boston).   Read the eintire review in this week's Block Island Times here.