Some time during my childhood, I saw a cartoon in which the automobile was on trial for its life. (Ironically, it was released the same year—1957–as “Twelve Angry Men,” perhaps, to this day, the best argument against capital punishment.) The point of the story—the reason why countless American kids have seen it in drivers’ ed classes—is the automobile is blamed for the dangers caused by its driver.
Another kid, who probably saw the cartoon a decade or so before I did, seems to have taken a different message from it. Instead of seeing reckless drivers as true villains, he saw the automobile as the poor, aggrieved victim, much as he sees white cisgender heterosexual men
By now, you’ve probably figured out that I am referring to the Fake Tan Fũhrer, a.k.a., El Cheeto Grande, the Mango Menace or Golfin’ Golem.
His apparent belief that transgender leftist environmentalist cyclists like me have it in for his self-beloved self, I mean automobiles is expressed in his rationale for rescinding Federal funding for bike lanes, pedestrian malls or anything else that can make it safer to pedal or walk through American cities. In notices (which, one wonders, whether FTF himself dictated) to local officials, the US Department of Transportation declared such projects as “hostile” to automobiles and claimed they run counter to the DoT’s priority of “increasing roadway capacity for motor vehicles.” I have to wonder whether such a statement is written anywhere in DoT’s policies or simply another impromptu fiction from our “Dear Leader.”
So, boys and girls (I am trying not to run afoul of FTF’s decrees about the language of gender!), just remember that all those poor, picked-on SUVs and pimped-out pickup trucks are simply getting the room they need to breathe—just like those dudes you see on the subway who sit with their legs spread across the width of two seats. Overcompensation, anyone?
