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This is too brilliant a column not to be online! It came to my attention in 2001, and I used it as an extra-credit reading assignment to extend our unit on SUVs.
It's one of the best post-9/11 pieces I've read.
Friday, October 19, 2001
Bring SUV Drivers in for
Questioning
By Mark Miller
Special to The
Examiner
Attorney General Ashcroft wants us to be on the lookout
for suspicious activity. We're the guardians of our homeland, he says —
America's first line of defense.
Responding to my country's call, I've turned a watchful
eye on my fellow Angeleños, alert for activities hostile to The American Way.
At the risk of alarming the millions who read this
column and rely upon it for important civil defense tips, I must report that
we are completely infiltrated by people whose activities pose a
"credible threat" to our national well-being.
This became apparent on my first reconnaissance patrol.
Slipping unnoticed into Beverly Hills, I observed hundreds of people
masquerading as shoppers.
Since the current economic slump began, experts have
warned that if we don't keep buying lots of stuff that we don't need, but
instead unpatriotically put our money in savings accounts, America's Ponzi
scheme economy could collapse.
As I shadowed the "shoppers," I saw that
while they seemed fascinated by items such as $2,500 blouses, $400 bras,
$1,400 loafers and $25,000 wristwatches, few of them bought anything.
These people must be put on watch lists.
Next I penetrated Santa Monica, where I was shocked to
find legions of saboteurs disguised as "soccer moms" and
"dads" and driving military-sized trucks their propaganda organs
misrepresent as "sport utility vehicles."
Political analysts have warned for years that our
insatiable and increasing appetite for oil has made America a junkie nation,
as desperately dependent upon Middle Eastern suppliers as heroin addicts are
on their dealers.
Clearly then, everyone who drives a hyper-bloated SUV
should be taken in for questioning — particularly the ones whose vehicles
have those massive front bumpers with no apparent utility save for pushing
people in electric cars over cliffs.
Posing as a "Starbucks customer" sitting at a
sidewalk table, I spied on SUV movements. I noted their drivers' confident
airs and arrogant pride at driving three- ton vehicles that get as little as
10 miles per gallon ("I can afford it!") and whose sluggish acceleration
has been shown to slow city traffic through controlled intersections by as
much as 30 percent.
Ironically these are the vehicles that in L.A. since
September 11th most often display American flags.
Pretending to read the Santa Monica Mirror, I watched an Enemy of America back her Ford
Excursion into a parking space and knock over two sidewalk tables, scattering
latte drinkers like panicked tundra pigs.
It was not lost on your vigilant reporter that this
terrorist "mom" knew only how to drive the vehicle, not park it.
Posing as a "typical upscale homemaker,"
right down to the rolled-up exercise mat under her arm, she professed
"shock" at the toppled tables and then darted into a "yoga
studio" — which judging from the number of SUVs crowding its parking lot
is clearly a terrorist cell.
I expanded my surveillance by enlisting operatives in
West Hollywood, who alert me to others who threaten our freedoms.
One reported in on Wednesday, asking if I thought her
landlord, who raised the rent of an upstairs gay couple from $2,10 0 to
$3,000 to force them out, and then rented the same unit to a heterosexual
couple for $2,300, might be in league with the terrorists.
I assured her that he is, although he might not be
aware of it himself. She has alerted
the proper authorities.
Ignoring them, she popped out of her car and strode
away, all purpose. Her sweatshirt was emblazoned "UCLA School of
Business."
No, I am not making this up.
Maybe she'll join the ranks of those MBA Talibans whose
predatory interpretation of capitalism ascribes to the Greed is Good doctrine
— the ammoral opportunism that spurs American companies to sell DDT, the
environmentally devastating insecticide long banned in the USA, everywhere
else around the world.
Maybe she'll find a market for her skills at one of the
big tobacco companies that still give away cigarettes to kids all across the
globe, every year hooking a few hundred thousand more.
Since September 11th the US has worked hard to tell the
world what good people we are. And we are, by and large.
But meanwhile the actions of the un-Americans among us
are sending out another message — and actions, as we know, speak louder than
words.
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