The Lorax
An American senator in 1939, Alfred "The Lorax" Ramsey was a fierce proponent of environmental legislation. He rose to national prominence for his compelling defense of the American Truffula forests in his home state of Montana. The tree was critical to the local ecosystem, providing shade and fruit for the animals such as the supposedly extinct brown bearstoats and Sioux swans. However, logging operations at the behest of corrupt political boss James Onceler were underway at an unsustainable rate because of the high-quality wood, delicious syrup, and cotton-like foliage that could be extracted from the trees.[1] It is commonly thought that Ramsey was expelled from the Senate because of the underhanded plots of the Onceler machine, but the fact is that Ramsey resigned after just a few months in the Senate, lifting himself from his seat and walking out in disgust.
Ramsey's increasingly environmentalist views and the effectiveness with which he articulated them, along with his honest demeanor and nice physique,[2] led him to become one of the most famous orators and influential Senators of his time, despite his short tenure. His back-country Montana drawl (which took a "sharpish and bossy" tone when he was passionate about a subject) and his constant demand that logging companies "lower axe and face facts" lent him the nickname The Lorax.
Humble origins
The young Ramsey lived in a house on the border of the American Truffula forest in Montana. He had a reputation of being "the best American that ever lived"[3] with the locals. This was thanks to his extensive knowledge and reverence for American History: he could name every Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, and he could trace anyone's lineage back to Thomas Jefferson just from judging their skin tone. At his house he would often have over several boys for totally normal reasons, doing completely ordinary things such as playing music or printing newspapers or drinking Kool-Aid.
His appointment to the Senate came as a surprise to everyone. The previous senator had a family history of heart trouble, which came to its inevitable conclusion shortly after he had been shot in the heart by a rather unethical debt collector. His political party was at a loss as to who to appoint to his chair, for it was quite an inconvenient time for them. They were in the process of promoting the logging bill for James Onceler and they didn't have energies to spare to search for the ideal candidate, namely, someone gullible enough not to interfere with the deal. Yet they couldn't find a single drunken hobo the people would support: every time one was introduced to the public as the appointee for Senator, the people would take one look at his hobo beard and smell his hobo stench, and then they would start booing and throwing things. The party officials would have to run away using umbrellas as shields as the hobo would stand there amidst the chaos and sing the Battle Hymn of the Old Republic while chugging out of a bottle wrapped in a paper bag.
The solution came when the party president's son, who had attended Ramsey's camps, recommended him for the position. The president and his son reached a compromise: Ramsey would be appointed to the Senate if the son would just quit wearing those silly robes, wipe off all that make-up, and quit talking about how Lord Xenu is going to carry us all to heaven on a comet.
Actions in Congress
Despite his new location in Washington, D.C., Ramsey still retained many of the mannerisms of his home. Hence the popular saying: "You can take The Lorax out of the forest, but you can't take the forest out of The Lorax."[4]
The Matthew Robert Craig Maloney incident
Ramsey was not used to dealing with the press, accustomed as he was to living in the woods, and given his rumored ability to appear and disappear into tree trunks, allowing him to escape at the first sign of annoyance. In one fateful interview with some reporters Ramsey showed the curious group several tricks that are useful in the woods, such as building fires and bird calls. The reporters later ridiculed him for no end for his strange habits, usually using headlines involving some pun on "for the birds". When the news broke next morning, Ramsey flew into a rage, feeling he had been betrayed by people who acted like his friends. He proceeded to menace the streets and deck anyone who got in the way of his search for one particular journalist, Bruno Maloney, who had written the headline "New Senator for the Birds; Smells of Bear Poo". Ramsey caught Maloney and did a number on him, after which he was sent to jail, because government officials were accountable for their actions back in the day.
Although incarcerated, Ramsey still kept up with news from the Senate. It was during his stay in jail that he learned of Onceler's logging bill and how it was advancing unopposed in his absence. When he was released from prison, he swore he would "speak for the trees", for the trees cannot speak, a well-known botanical fact even at that early point in history.
The filibuster
From that day forth, it became The Lorax's determined goal to stop the Onceler machine and save the American Truffula forests and the biodiversity contained within them. On the day the Senate was to vote on Onceler's land usage bill, he took the floor and proceeded on a lengthy diatribe against the evils of political graft and squandering natural resources. When asked to yield the floor by his former allies, he dismissed them with little more than a wink of his eye and a twist of his head[6] and continued talking. Eventually he ran out of things to say, so he started reading legal documents to the Senate. When he ran out of nearby papers to read, he spoke whatever came to his mind, often resorting to nonsense rhymes, which led some of the more superstitious witnesses to believe that he spoke in tongues.
He was in the middle of struggling to think of a rhyme for "spogbarts" when a mailman came into the chamber. He carried with him a sack of letters from Ramsey's friends in the forest. Ramsey read one to the Senate: it said the last American Truffula tree had been cut down, and everyone was packing up and leaving for God knows where. It was then that The Lorax, with a tear in his eye, (like that one Indian guy who cries when you litter. You know the one[7]) got up and left the Senate chamber, never to be seen again.
Although defeated, Ramsey still had one small victory: The letters were sufficient evidence to convict James Onceler and his cronies of grafting and illegally cutting down trees that don't belong to them. Onceler was sent to jail, and his political machine crumbled without him to lead it. By the time he was released, he was broken, bitter, bad, bald, bludgeoned, bleeding, bleating, boorish old man, with no more trees to cut down and no one to love. Also, he was banal and brazen. And biting. That one got him in trouble more than once.
Aftermath
The only trace of evidence that Ramsey had ever been in the Senate chamber was one single message that he had carved into his desk, presumably during roll call or the reading of a boring bill. It said "RAMSEY WUZ HERE". Whatever that meant is a cause of quarrel among historians[8] to this day.
Onceler, wracked with grief and driven insane by his loss, took the last precious American Truffula seed known to exist, and decided to give it to an unidentified child in exchange for a cow. What happened next is unknown, nor is it known how the government subsequently received a donation of five thousand golden eggs from an anonymous benefactor, along with specific instructions to reforest the area that had been cleared with the money from the eggs. And at the time of writing, the world record for the most expensive omelet has not been broken.
Footnotes
- ↑ It is thought as odd that Ramsey was so opposed to the logging industry, given is own rugged lumberjack-like appearance.
- ↑ People who witnessed Ramsey's speeches reportedly state that he had "gams to die for".
- ↑ Sources state: "Forget the bald eagle! The national bird should be the gander – a gander at those thighs! Yowza!"
- ↑ On an unrelated note, they also say "I wish that beast would just seize me and make love to me so savagely that PETA starts protesting us."
- ↑ The far right, aight?
- ↑ One witness reported, "He's so dreamy, I heard he can do one-handed push-ups using only his legs!"
- ↑ Except instead of littering, it's reckless environmental destruction, and instead of Indian, he's sexy. Sources tell us.
- ↑ "Well of course he was here. You can just smell the raw sexuality oozing out of the spot where he once sat!"
