D. Dowd Muska: Asshole of the week

Is your latest column, "Four Wheels Good, Two Wheels Bad," supposed to be some sort of joke?

I suppose not, and Dowd is short for "dowdy".

I didn't think it was possible to be a bigger jerk than some of the people I encounter on my daily ride to work, but I'd genuinely fear for my life if encountering you on the road.

I suppose it never occurred to you that most people begin bike commuting because of gas prices and relief from stress (although that can be difficult with people like you out there). I suggest you take a trip to either Belgium or the Netherlands (where up to 40% of the population commutes by bike), and see how many of those people think of their chosen mode of transportation as a children's toy.

Maybe you'd like to give a lecture to World Bike Relief about how that organization is just wasting time by providing thousands of "children's toys" to address Third World poverty, malnutrition, and AIDS prevention.

However, I'm gonna guess you've probably never been outside of this country, as your fear of anything outside of the status quo indicates extreme xenophobia.

You must be some sort of a US history buff, too, as indicated by your Original 13 Flag header on your site. Maybe you should double check on how popular bicycles used to be in this country before laziness, carelessness, and sloth allowed the automobile to cocoon us into our present mess of unlivable, unwalkable, unbikeable cities.

And while you're stereotyping cyclists, take a good look at your own raging, speeding, aggressive-driving, stop-sign-rolling, red-light-running, no-lane-change-signaling reflection in the mirror. The machine you're hogging the road with carries a helluva lot more risk and liability than those "children's toys" you're defaming, and are the number #1 killer of children in this country. What's the bigger danger here?

I sure hope your attitude changes over the next few years, because gas isn't getting any cheaper, and there's a lot more of us on the way. Actually, it would be pretty funny to see you petulantly stomping your feet at the gas station over the $8 a gallon price displayed, while happy person after happy person rides past you waving and ringing their little bike bells, glad to be moving and active than still stuck inside that fucking cage.

Please learn to share. There's enough road for everybody.

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