The I-Man's Blog: Tree Travesty

There is only one scenario in which I can conceivably see myself becoming enthusiastic about the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree.  If, in all it’s soaring, 75 foot, multi-ton glory, it fell over on Brian Boitano “in mid Triple-Lutz” on the skating rink below.

I have been decidedly unenthusiastic about the “tree tradition” ever since I came to New York.  This year’s tree ceremony has done nothing to change my mind. 

 For all the years the Imus in the Morning program was headquartered at NBC, at what was then the RCA building, every f-ing holiday season I could look forward to not being able to park my limousine in the plaza that divides the building’s entrance from the stupid skating rink.  Why?  Because that’s where they put the idiotic 75 foot tall dead plant. 

 The tree aggravation would begin in November, as it did this season, and continue well beyond Christmas.  Every year.  No relief.  And for what?  So that hordes of babbling clods from Kansas could come and gawk at the thing with their fingers in their nose?  Not only is vehicle access to the plaza blocked during what is a truly awful season, traffic conditions across the entire midtown area become enough to make Bangladesh look appealing. God forbid somebody has a heart attack, and you can just about bet on it, because the nearest ambulance might as well be in Antarctica.

Besides the personal inconvenience I had to weather for far too long, there is the other signature, and seminal, event of the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree experience that has imposed itself on us yet again:  The lighting ceremony.  The moment when a freezing, sneezing crush of humanity passes every conceivable kind of viral infection among themselves as they crane their necks to get a glimpse of Al Roker engaged in an insipid conversation with some sap who makes Snooki look like Marilyn vos Savant.  That’s right before he introduces Kenny G – or this year, the reconstituted Boyz II Men – rendering some equally insipid holiday tune, while, often as not, a squad of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” ice dancers humiliate themselves in elf outfits on the skating rink. 

And, of course, “The Climactic Moment.” Roker, or from time to time Regis and Kelly, along with some guy who’s fresh out of an AA meeting in a Santa suit, all counting down in cringing unison to throw a switch that will cause half a billion tree lights to abruptly make a carbon footprint the size of Al Gore’s head.  The really special treat this year?  Helping with the countdown – Jeff Zucker. The soon-to-be ex-CEO of NBC Universal the minute the NBC-Comcast merger gets nailed down. As my producer Bernard McGuirk so aptly put it, “What screams ‘Christmas’ more than Jeff Zucker standing there with his shirt unbuttoned to his navel?”  Short answer:  “Anything.”    

And regarding the environment, does anybody ever express any remorse about the damned tree?  No they don’t.  Here’s this noble, living, breathing, “consumer of carbon dioxide” that had been standing – in the case of a 74 foot Norway spruce, about half a century – suddenly and violently assassinated by an “Abu Musab al-Zarqawi wannabe” with a chainsaw, draped with a bunch of overwrought crystal crap, displayed like some jarring botanical hussy and finally ground up in a woodchipper for dog-run mulch.  Great.    

Still, I can find reason to rejoice:  Rejoice that the Imus in the Morning program is now headquartered at the WABC Radio and FOX News buildings where limo access remains unimpeded by the impositions of thoughtless holiday ingrates. 

So, once again this year, and as every holiday season since 1933, the iconic Rockefeller Center Tree has been set ablaze.  Just, unfortunately, not with a blowtorch.