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laments the hidden message of the Bush administration: |
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 "Listen, you airy-fairy pencil-necks! You can have your little sissy gas-saving cars, but real men in hardhats like me drive RAMS and DIABLOS!" |
How to end the gas pump crisis:
Ads with Italian guys on Vespas
of TheColumnists.com
AMERICANS ARE BUYING 2001 model cars and light trucks that average 24.5 miles per gallon. "The worst (gas mileage) since 1980," says the government.
At the same time, the Bush Administration has released the suggestions of a task force formed under Vice President Dick Cheney to determine ways to improve the nation's energy situation. Drill, dig and use nuclear power, says the task force. Conservation is nice, but don't count on it to amount to much.
Meanwhile, the list of the "Meanest Vehicles for the Environment in 2001" compiled by the environmental group GreenerCars.com features The Ram, the Sierra, the Yukon, the Diablo.
The "Greenest Vehicles of 2001" have names such as Civic, Prius, Insight, Prizm.
Is a picture forming here, people? Might that picture be "Real Men Don't Conserve"?
We've always sort of known that, haven't we? I mean, a real man drives a pickup truck, or an SUV, and wouldn't be caught in a Honda Civic unless one of his shotguns accidentally blew a tire off his Ram and he needed a ride to meet his roustabouts for buffalo burgers.
Real men drill for oil and mine coal. They don't fool around with pantywaist solar power or biomass energy, (whatever that is.) Commie plot. People who believe in that sort of thing eat poached fish and sip mineral water.
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Some sort of hybrid electric-gasoline vehicle with a piddly-ass 35-horsepower engine? No way. What you do is, you build a Sport Utility Vehicle with a V-10, you make it look as much like a medium tank as you can. Give it a name like "Thrust." If it gets more than 12 miles per gallon, make the engine bigger and add steer horns on the front.
"But what about air pollution?" asks the Greenie,
Why, son, don't you worry your lil' effete head about that. We ain't gonna run out of oil. Got lotsa oil. Just need to get the pesky government off our backs so we can go get it. Air pollution? Worrying about air pollution is for wimps. Air is air.
Global warming? What kind of airy-fairy thing is that? Where was that treaty again? Kyoto? Not American at all.
Real men burn gasoline. Lots of it.
Problem is, if this sort of thing keeps up, we're going to be staggering around, wheezing and peering through the smog that is blackening our 10-gallon hats. The ol' Yukon went up on blocks when gas hit $12.99 a gallon.
Not to worry. There is a solution right before us.
We engineer a massive restructuring of the American male psyche, of course. Rumble, rumble is out. Humvees become quaint relics of an earlier age, like paddle wheel steamers. Drilling is for dum-dums. Gasoline fumes make you impotent.
Voila. We start saving oil. Many of us learn that the sky is sort of a pretty blue color. Everyone's happy.
And just how might we manage that, you ask?
Through the power of American media, I reply. Given a few months of the proper material on television, a couple of movies, a think piece by Hugh Hefner, it'll happen.
And here's what will put it over the top: Who are the men who, deservedly or not, have a reputation for being the most macho, women-loving, testosterone-drenched, enemy-stomping of them all?
Right. The Italians.
What do they get around on? Vespas. Itty-bitty, put-putting motor scooters that get-- what?--45 miles per gallon? (Yes, I know the Italians also gave us the Ferrari, which doesn't win many mpg prizes. But how many Italians drive Ferraris? One percent? Proves my point.)
So, look, if macho guys like that ride around on motor scooters--motor scooters! - how can we continue to equate driving a gas hog SUV with being a real man? Doesn't compute.
If we're smart, then, we'll let the sons of old Italy combined with American media know-how pull us out of our current macho-driven energy dilemma. The Sopranos have already given us a running start. We just need to build a follow-on media campaign to achieve a new paradigm of masculinity that replaces vroom-vroom with putt-putt.
Just as a for instance, how about HBO does a series starring a member of the Milan Sierra Club? He has relationships with three women who look like teenage Sophia Lorens. Hell, present-day Sophia Lorens. The pilot is about a contest to build a car that gets 38 mpg in the city and has a capacious back seat.
Ratings through the roof, especially if we could get DiNiro. It will start all of us thinking about conservation, the ecology and tight skirts.
So
you see, we really don't have a major problem here. Nothing that
can't be solved by a good, solid, Italian-inspired, media-fueled,
sex-driven five-star fad. Conservation is macho. Conservation
is sexy. Avanti!
McFadden
drives a car that get 30 mpg if he's careful.
© 2001 by Charles
M. McFadden. The top illustration is from IMSI's Master/Clips
Collection, 1895 Francisco Blvd., San Rafael, CA, 94901-5506,
USA. The gas mask photo is courtesy PBS' "Nova" and
Bundesarchiv, Germany.
You can comment on this column or contact Chuck McFadden with an email to: talkback@thecolumnists.com
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