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From conservative humorist P.J. O'Rourke: An unabashed love note to the glory days of the American car -- and a flip of the finger to the "Fun Suckers" who are destroying it
Driving Like Crazy
by P.J. O'Rourke
Who's really killing the American automobile industry?
According to conservative satirist P.J. O'Rourke, it's
neither the auto executives nor the unions -- it's the Fun-
Suckers. "You know the Fun-Suckers," he writes in his new
book, Driving Like Crazy: Thirty Years of Vehicular Hell-
bending, Celebrating America the Way It's Supposed to Be –
With an Oil Well in Every Backyard, a Cadillac Escalade in
Every Carport, and the Chairman of the Federal Reserve
Mowing Our Lawn. "The Fun-Suckers go around saying how
unsafe this fun thing is and how unfair, unjust, uncaring,
insensitive, divisive, contagious, and fattening every
other thing that's fun is."
(continued from above)
But the Fun-Suckers haven't dampened his spirits, and
in Driving Like Crazy, O'Rourke assembles a collection of
classic pieces that chronicle his more than thirty year
love affair with the American car -- which began with his
childhood as the grandson of a Toledo Buick dealer, and is
danger of ending as the government bails out the auto
industry and places ever-more-strident restrictions on
emissions.
Some of the many laughs in Driving Like Crazy:
"Pity the poor American car when congress and the White
House get through with it -- a light-weight vehicle with a
small carbon footprint, using alternative energy and
renewable resources to operate in a sustainable way. When I
was a kid we called it a Schwinn."
___
"Cars fulfilled the ideal of American's founding fathers.
Of all the truths we hold self-evident, of all the
unalienable rights with which we're endowed, what's most
important to the American Dream? Freedom to leave!"
___
"There was no pre-marital sex in America before the
invention of the internal combustion engine. You couldn't
sneak a girl into the rec room of your house because your
mom and dad were unable to commute so they were home all
day working on the farm. And your farm house didn't have a
rec room because recreation had not been discovered due to
all the farm work."
___
"Cars caused America to be paved. There are much worse
things you can do to a country than pave it, as the
Sudanese are proving in Darfur."
___
"The car provided Americans with an enviable standard of
living. You could not get a steady job with high wages and
health and retirement benefits working on the General
Livestock Corporation assembly line putting udders on
cows."
___
"The American car was a source of intellectual stimulation.
Think of the innovation, the invention, the sheer genius
that transformed the 1908 Model T Ford into the 1968 Shelby
Cobra GT-500 in the course of a single human lifetime full
of speeding tickets."
___
"My personal theory on the visceral appeal of the Jeep is
that it is purposeful-looking while having no clear
purpose. The Jeep is inadequate as a pickup, drafty as a
sedan, over-sized as an ATV, and lacks sufficient cargo
space to be an SUV. True, Jeeps will go almost everyplace,
but, if you think about it, Jeeps mostly go everyplace
there's no reason to go. Thus the Jeep is very cool."
___
"Young lads of good courage, lasses brave at heart, spit
upon the hand that offers you the keys to the Prius.
Freedom will dawn again."
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