For a few short minutes two weeks ago, 4.1 million Americans may have understood the problems of failing to invest in our nation’s crumbling infrastructure.
It wasn’t because a bridge collapsed; it wasn’t because a sinkhole opened up in the middle of a highway; and it wasn’t because of an accident on an aging transit system. It was because one comedian, John Oliver, decided to use it as a laugh line. But the seriousness of his message could not have been clearer when he put it this way:
The lack of political urgency in tackling this problem is insane. And you cannot tell me that you are not interested in this, because every summer people flock to see our infrastructure threatened by terrorists or aliens. But we should care just as much when it’s under threat from the inevitable passage of time.
It shouldn’t take a comedian cracking jokes for us to realize the dire state of our infrastructure, but that’s the trouble with a crisis that hides in plain sight.
Read the rest on The Huffington Post.