While most Americans are spending time this summer enjoying the sun in the comfort of their houses’ yards, the New York Times is out with a new exposé on how lawn care is problematic, once viewed through the lens of social justice.
Lawns are contributing to pollution and climate change, asserts narrator David Botti, and their origins are far from woke, in a seven-minute video on the history of American lawns.
Botti says lawns are part of the “colonizing of America,” which transformed the landscape from “pristine wilderness” to “identical rows of manicured nature.”
“These lawns come on the backs of slaves,” he continues, zooming in on a painting of George Washington in a field to highlight men cutting the grass with scythes. “It’s grueling, endless work.”
“By the 1870s we also see American culture slowly start to embrace lawns for the privileged masses,” he states.
The video explains that the perfect lawn is associated with being a model citizen, how the first sprinkler was invented in 1871, and about the advent of “so-called trade cards” that “advertised the hell out of lawn and garden products.”
The Times also refers to the work of historian Ted Steinberg, who calls lawns the “outdoor expression of ’50s conformism.”
To drive home the point, he inserts vintage footage of two women being interviewed in their yards talking about how they moved to their communities to live exclusively near other white people.
Neither of them says anything about desiring, having, or maintaining a lawn.
The Times refers readers to two books: Steinberg’s American Green: The Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Lawn and The Lawn: A History of an American Obsession, by Virginia Scott Jenkins.
Jenkins’ book concludes that lawns in America are status symbols, and their popularity grew due to promotion by the garden and golf industries and the federal government’s United States Department of Agriculture.
She also said that lawns “are a symbol of man’s control of, or superiority, over his environment.”
Both Steinberg and Jenkins make the case that lawns are harming the environment.
“Steinberg makes a convincing case that ‘turf hysteria” and the “giant chemical orgy’ of modern lawn care have led to water pollution and the shunning of native plants,” one review of his book says.
The Times links to a 2005 report from NASA that said there are more lawns in the United States than irrigated cornfields and attempting to quantify how much water is used keeping lawns alive in many areas of the country.
The article also includes the Times’ vintage reporting on President Theodore Roosevelt mowing his lawn in 1914.
“Col. Roosevelt refused to discuss politics today,” the article on the Times front page said and is shown in the video. “He got in a lot of good, vigorous exercise. For three hours he pushed a lawnmower out on the lawns at Sagamore Hill. And the exercise did not seem to tire him at all.”
The article and video make it clear how lawns — and the Times’ reporting — have changed over the course of history.
Read more at Breitbart
Oh my! The soft, sinister hiss of summer lawns (apologies to Joni)
I think the issue with Socialists is that many people will never own a lawn, let alone employees / slaves. The Left should be renamed The Warped. They have nothing better to do than to deride the status quo.
Consider this article in the light that every Democratic candidate for president except one seems to think that if the US reduces CO2, the entire world will have emissions reduced. It is incredible that those in position to seriously run for president are so stupid.
If climate change were not a fraud, our only option would be adaption.
8/14/2019
https://climatechangedispatch.com/nyt-lawns-racist-pollution-climate/
This article shows just how crazy some people have become and this craziness is a much worse problem than having lawns ever could be.
The article called lawn a status symbol. How can something be a status symbol if everyone in the neighborhood has one? That shows just how flawed the logic is. In addition, if seem if a liberal doesn’t like something he will always give it some lame link to racism or sexism.
There is no acknowledgement that the carbon in lawn clippings that end up in a land fill removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
The author would be happy with our place. We have five and a quarter acres and only a tiny lawn where chemicals are not used. Most of our property is natural wilderness.
The NYT is publishing garbage like this and just yesterday I received another email advocating that I subscribe to get the truth.
The sinister hiss of summer lawns.
Sorry, Joni.
This article shows just how crazy some people have become and this craziness is a much worse problem than having lawns ever could be.
The article called lawn a status symbol. How can something be a status symbol if everyone in the neighborhood has one? That shows just how flawed the logic is. In addition, if seem if a liberal doesn’t like something he will always give it some lame link to racism or sexism.
There is no acknowledgement that the carbon in lawn clippings that end up in a land fill removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
The author would be happy with our place. We have five and a quarter acres and only a tiny lawn where chemicals are not used. Most of our property is natural wilderness.
The NYT is publishing garbage like this and just yesterday I received another email advocating that I subscribe to get the truth.
Oh my those racist lawns all nice and lush and green i once lived in a house with a racists Green Lawn then there is Kentucy Blue Grass. The NYT is Stupid its chief editor is idiot
Wow,. the lefty Supremists leave nothing untouched, even a lawn must be attacked. Imagine a city or a community where everything was left to nature. Here we live in the city of Gold Coast in Oz deadly venomous brown snakes thrive, saw five in my yard last summer, two of them in my garage. Imagine the danger if one didn’t have a clear yard plus we are surrounded by volatile eucalyptus bush in our suburb. The devastation wrought by bush fires in Australia is known world wide, yet these morons want the yards to be full of native vegetation! Much of your country is in similar peril.
I have a battery powered lawn mower . I feel so virtuous.
I can just sneak right up on those snakes Dave of Reedy Creek . In Canada the
Prime Minister (soon to be unelected ) encourages growth of the grass you smoke, they get a tax high but God help you if the water control swat team jumps you
watering .
“She also said that lawns “are a symbol of man’s control of, or superiority, over his environment.””
“Control of & Superiority over Environment” is the climate catastrophists’ middle name.
There’s one possible conclusion from all this: I am; therefore, I’m a racist.
Now that this is settled, I can get on with life and ignore the gibberish.