Get Smarter

In the first of what will probably be many rants (with election season kicking into high gear, if you're a John McSame fan, best stop reading until December or so), this is my plea to everyone to stop buying gas-guzzling, environment-killing, wanna-be status symbol SUVs.

Now, if you work for the Secret Service or patrol the Southern border, you're excused. Pretty much everyone else has no good reason to keep buying these stupid cars.

In case you've been drunk in a gutter for the last 6 months, gas prices are really high. You may have also heard about global warming. Your SUV is a huge part of the problem.

I think some of this is fueled by ego...once the Smiths next door get a Hummer, you have to get one. You can't imagine driving something as unmanly as a subcompact or a Smart Car, even though I'm pretty sure that your car does not make you tough. If Bill Gates got out of an H2, I know I could still kick his ass. But if Mike Tyson was driving a Geo Metro, I'd still be sure to give him a wide berth. And cover my ears.

"But I have kids/stuff to haul/a tiny weiner/etc...." These excuses are garbage. When I was a wee lad, none of my friends' moms had SUVs, and they got us everywhere just fine. They had Camrys and Oldsmobiles and station wagons and other cars that, while not great on the environment, got more than 13 mpg and didn't cost $60,000.

I don't want to hear the 'off-roading' plea, either. Nobody takes their SUVs or even their Jeep 4x4s off-roading. Number one, they cost too much to risk getting dirty or dented. Number two, you're scared of the woods and have no idea where an off-roading trail is.

The thing that's funny is that this isn't the first time in modern memory we've had a gigantic gas crisis. In the 70s there were all kinds of oil problems in the U.S., and as a result everyone started buying smaller cars, using public transportation, etc. It's not like that was 200 years ago.

Drilling in Alaska or off the coast of the U.S. won't help this, no matter what W and his buddies at Halliburton say. We need to use less gas. Buy a smaller car, buy a hybrid, use public transportation, and quit trying so hard to have a bigger/badder/tougher car than the dorks next door.