Friday, May 29, 2009
Politics Green Villains of the CENTURY: Daniel Henninger and the Wall Street Journal
Posted by Mike Conklin on Fri, May 29, 2009 at 2:36 PM
This is normally the type of story I would leave for Mark or Jonny to comment on, but, in a Wall Street Journal piece about how, by insisting on stricter regulations regarding fuel efficiency, President Obama is driving the final nail into the coffin of American car culture, Daniel Henninger tries to use the fucking Boss against us, arguing, I guess, that in order to pull out of a town to win, the car in which one is doing the pulling out must be a giant, gas-guzzling douche-mobile.
Aside from small cars are really faggoty, Henninger's argument is essentially this:
This marks the end of the internal combustion engine as we knew it, and it is the way Americans have defined, designed and literally driven much of the nation's culture for as long as anyone can remember. Car culture is America's culture.
And yes, hopefully this marks the end of the internal combustion engine as we knew it, because, the internal combustion engine as we knew it played a huge role in getting us into the mess we're currently in—from an environmental perspective, of course, but also in terms of how the "bigger, better, faster" mentality that led us to develop these cars in the first place has come to define us around the world, as morons. He romanticizes cars from another era and has decided, frighteningly, that they are the greatest contributions to world culture the United States has ever made. It's a crazy old-person argument, obviously, from a guy who wants to stunt progress because of his own silly nostalgia.
And again, he tried to use the Boss against us.
Comments (6)
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Several comments, at least a couple of which I already made to you but which I have not shared with the entire internet yet:
1. Congratulations on somehow finding a single representative pullquote out of all that. It's so comprehensively infuriating that I probably would have pasted the whole thing and gone line-by-line, and then no one would have read it.
2. The way in which he makes this US-out-of-my-gas-tank argument is through a freaking mix tape.
2a. What kind of douchecock starts off a mixtape with two songs by the same band?
3. Even granting the moronically Happy Days-era assumption that America is represented by powerful, aesthetically pleasing sports cars -- when was the last time an American auto company made one of those? Sure you want to blame fuel-efficiency standards there? And not, say, the inability of the American auto industry to build a credible muscle car in my lifetime?
4. Actually, dickweed, we'll have fun, fun, fun til the Ford Motor Company takes our T-Bird away, which they did, because NOBODY BUYS THEM ANYMORE.
5. My favorite reader comment so far, in its entirety:
"What Mr. Henninger's column actually notes is what may be the final assault on manhood in our country. There has been a decades long concerted governmental and cultural effort to turn us into a nation of wimps. Why, even the Governator has become a,"girly man", to use his own phrase. As we have now reached male eye liner and other examples of the metro sexual, we will now all be stuffed into little guy cars. Give me back the 1950's. Where is John Wayne when we need him?"
This guy has traded in his Corvette for the new model every year since the Ford administration, guaranteed.
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To paraphrase what Mark so eloquently articulated above, Daniel Henninger is a douchecock. As are all the Baby Boomers ever. The end.
I actually agree that manhood is something that's been lost in this country, but I think it has fuck-all to do with cars or sports or any of that other pop culture bullshit.
Manhood can only be lost by individual men, not by Men. So be a man, and find your Manhood. Please, for the love of christ.
Yeah I know, just like that Detachable Penis song, hate that song... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8utjLBZuEI
