Wednesday, January 15, 2003
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Wednesday, January 15, 2003 |
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Sanity check on SUVs, terrorists By
BILLY MURPHY There is a lot I can understand about our culture, but come on, we are nuts. I thought it was dumb enough when the lady came up with the failure-free gym program. For example, so kids wouldn't feel failure during skipping rope, she had them remove the rope. That's right, they have two kids simulating turning the rope and the child in the middle is jumping up and down. There are lots of other stupid things we do in the name of "civilization," but nothing has reached the ridiculous myopic heights as our SUV wars. Other people in other countries battle over the right speak their mind or make the simple choice of how to live, but we spend our time clashing over miles per gallon and carbon emissions. And I don't mean a fun, healthy debate. Recent confrontations have reached Bull Run-like proportions. We as a people once fought a civil war over the most important of human rights and now? We have the 4-wheel drive. Where we once had the Lincoln emancipation, we now have the Ford Expedition. I have often made fun of SUVs and such in my columns, but I never thought Americans would commit terrorist acts in the debate. I never thought people would spend hard-earned dollars running ads saying people who drive SUVs support terrorism. Where do people get this non-sequitur logic? Arianna Huffington, the Zsa Zsa Gabor of the news world, is leading this campaign with some other friends called "The Detroit Project" in linking the SUV to terrorist support. Huffington says the ads don't intend to demonize the drivers but only the SUVs. I don't support her views in any way, but her logic is like saying guns are the cause of murders and not people. The issue, though, is not the SUV debate, it's just that we have no cause bigger to fight about. Even after the largest wake-up call in our nation's history at 9/11 we continually redefine petty as even a less petty than the original petty. And Americans pretty much invented petty. So, we can forget the poor, the hungry, the tired. We are all gonna rally together and stop the production of the gas-guzzling faux-4-wheel-drive! Now that, that's a mission for life! It's no wonder we are laughed at by people in other lands. Our reasoning and moral sense has become about as skewed as a Clinton confession. My biggest fear is, where do we go from here? What will follow as the next big "revolution"? Will there be rebel forces gathered to denounce the condiment selection at McDonald's? I can see it now, "The Bottled Water War," Americans committing acts of violence against each other because some like filtered, some like mineral. I think it's time "Gulliver's Travels" was required reading for all. Seems to me, as a youth I laughed at the war the people were fighting over which end of the egg should be broken open. Only now in our situation, we are the ones who are cracked.
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