Rocks Are People, Too

In the latest example of big-government, politically-correct overreach, the California state legislature stands poised to strip serpentine of its title as "official state rock." Now, we admit that, prior to reading this scandalous article, we had no idea that California had a state rock. Or that any state had a state rock. Or that "serpentine" was a rock. Ignorance was bliss, but we are ignorant no longer.

Los Angeles Democrat Gloria ("The Piledriver") Romero sponsored the bill to divest serpentine of its lofty perch atop the California rockpile at the request of an asbestos awareness group. Serpentine, you see, contains chrysotile, a form of asbestos. Big Anti-Asbestos cries foul at the idea of California giving its seal of approval to a cancerous rock. Meantime, Big Geology fears that a state-sponsored crusade against serpentine will lead to increased anti-rock violence and pogroms at quarries statewide: "Geologists, who have taken to Twitter on behalf of the rock, assert that serpentine is harmless and is being demonized by advocates for people with asbestos-related diseases and possibly their trial lawyers, too." Things are getting ugly. A recent Twitter post aimed at the bill's sponsor, warned: "Dear gloria romero, you have picked the wrong nerds to mess with!"

(Digression: The RIGHT nerds to mess with would be the youthful stars of "Glee," who might kick your ass, but would do so with precision dance moves and catchy background music. EOD)

Forgotten in all this are the true victims: the rocks. Has anyone asked the little serpentines how they feel? Since 1965, these perky pebbles have done nothing but serve as goodwill, albeit slightly carcinogenic, ambassadors to the US and, indeed, the world at large. We didn't hear Gloria Romero complain when a contingent of serpentine flew to Indonesia a few years back in the wake of the massive post-Christmas earthquake to offer their services in the rebuilding effort. And in terms of politics, does that Democrat recall the invaluable Get-Out-the-Vote campaign for Barack Obama spearheaded by the Orange County Serpentine Organization?

More importantly, California was the first state to adopt an official state pet rock. Even today, only 28 states have official state rocks (Vermont, for some reason, has three, which seems extreme even by rock-enthusiast standards). Does California really need to be more like Delaware than it already is?

(Image from Wikipedia)