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Uncle Orson Reviews Everything
June 30, 2003
First appeared in print in The Rhinoceros Times, Greensboro, NC.
Hillary, Harry, and Fuel Economy
First things first:
Hillary's "book."
It's not a book, it's an extremely expensive campaign pamphlet. Hillary
has certainly not decided yet whether to run -- she's not going to waste herself
on a try at the presidency when it's not yet possible to determine whether W is
beatable or not. But having an "I'm so sweet and I love all you common people
and I'm smarter than just about everybody" book out there won't hurt her,
whether she runs in zip-four or zip-eight.
I can't say whether the book is filled with lies, but we do know of at least
one enormous omission: An explanation of how a person could start with
borrowed money in the cattle futures market, make absolutely no bad trades,
and then stop when the sum of exactly $100,000 had been reached, never to
invest again.
Until that remarkable set of transactions is explained in a way that does
not leave a big neon "bribe" sign flashing overhead, then anything else Hillary
might say is utterly worthless.
Because, at least so far, the American people have not knowingly elected
someone so obviously corrupt to the American presidency.
But there's always a first time. After all, we did reelect Bill.
*
After the fantasies of Hillary's book, it's refreshing to have a return to
reality.
I speak, of course, of the new Harry Potter novel.
I know, if you have even the remotest interest in Harry Potter, you
already own the book, are already reading it, and don't need me to tell you
anything about it.
But that has never stopped me before.
My own observation is that I've seen dozens of people reading the book in
the past week, and only a couple of them could be called children. This book is
not a children's book. It is a book about children, which can certainly be read
by children, but which is primarily purchased and read by adults.
I'm reading it aloud with my wife and nine-year-old daughter -- but it's
all I can do not to read ahead, because I am fully engrossed in the story.
(Because I'm reading it aloud, doing the voices, I also have developed the
most irritating habit of saying practically everything in a hyper-affected English
accent. Please don't slap me when you hear me talking that way. I'll stop
doing it as soon as we've finished the book.)
Every time you see the New York Times bestseller list and realize that
this book is not at the top of it, but instead has been shunted into a "children's
book" ghetto, remember: This is an active lie, a conspiracy to deprive J.K.
Rowling of public recognition of her achievement, which was to write a series of
books loved by readers of every age, without the blessing of the elitist literary
establishment.
Why did they move Rowling's books off the main list?
Because they sat in the number one position (and sometimes positions
two and three at the same time) for week after week and month after month,
and a bunch of whining babies in the New York literary establishment
complained that these "children's books" were keeping their books from getting
the recognition they deserved.
Well, guess what. Whenever any book is in the number one position,
then that book is forcing the next book down into the number two position.
Duh.
The reason for the whining was that the whiners didn't understand how
Rowling had done this incredible thing, why people were not just buying her
books, but reading them and talking about them.
They hated her because she had actually turned reading into a high
priority for a huge number of people who had long since given up on reading as
a form of entertainment.
And instead of learning from her and trying to write books that regular
people might actually enjoy instead of having to take them like medicine, the
literary snobs found it easier to put her in a little box and pretend she wasn't
there.
*
I drive a Ford Crown Victoria -- what my daughter's friends have
charitably called "an old man's car." I like it because it's great on long trips, it
has plenty of room for me to sit in the driver's seat without my knees being
jammed up around my elbows, and it has room for lots of passengers.
But big cars use more gas. I apologize for that, but not very sincerely.
Our other car, which is driven far more miles, gets better fuel economy. On
average, we're about average in fuel consumption.
The fact is, a lot of American drivers prefer, and some even need, bigger
cars. When you go to Europe and realize that the biggest cars could fit in the
trunk of a real car, you realize that this is only an American aberration.
But in America, the car is the only practical means of transportation.
Our suburbs are dominated by standalone stores surrounded by huge parking
lots, so that you can't go to Home Depot and WalMart and Cold Stone
Creamery without driving and parking your car three separate times, even
though by any rational standard, they're located quite close together.
We drive everywhere; we carry everything in our cars.
But we also want to conserve petroleum, or at least we did back in the
seventies, and the EPA still has the mandate of limiting pollution and
promoting fuel economy. So regulations were put in place requiring car
manufacturers to achieve certain goals in their fleetwide fuel economy.
That means that it's OK for them to sell a certain number of gas guzzlers,
as long as they balance those sales with enough fuel-saving cars that on
average, the cars they sell in a single year achieve the target gas mileage.
It's not a bad system, and the car companies have done a pretty good job
with it. It can lead to a few maddening things, like the story of the Ford
Taurus.
For a while, this was the bestselling fullsize car in America. Why?
Because it was comfortable and roomy without being huge; it was highly
maneuverable, it did well in bad weather, and when it first came out its
rounded lines were a welcome contrast to the boxy or sporty looks that seemed
to be the only choices.
Trouble was, the car was so good that they sold too many Tauruses (and
Mercury Sables -- the same car) and it was pushing their fleet average too high
for the EPA guidelines.
So they redesigned the Taurus and turned it into a compact car.
Now it isn't harming the fleet average.
But it also isn't the roomy, comfortable, beautiful car it used to be. It
also dumps snow in your trunk if you open it without first brushing your entire
car clear of the white stuff, which is simply bad design for an American car.
(But bad design is hardly new. For instance, the Lincoln Town Car. This
is an old man's luxury car, so I rent them when I travel. But the newest
model's gas tank cover has a sharp little protuberance cleverly placed so that
when you shove the nozzle of a gas hose into the hole, the latch gives you a
nice bloody gouge in your thumb -- or your knuckle, if you're left handed.
Remember: "Ford has a better idea!")
Maddeningly, Ford continues to call the Taurus a "fullsize car" and the
rental car companies go along with the charade. If Taurus is a fullsize car,
then a child's potty seat is a fullsize toilet.
But what choice have the car companies had, when they had the EPA
requirements on one side, and the American hunger for roomy cars on the
other. After all, we've had good nutrition for longer than most countries in
Europe, so we're taller and, yes, fatter than most people abroad. We need
bigger cars.
That's why so many Americans have had no choice but to take advantage
of a huge loophole in the EPA regulations.
You see, "trucks" are exempted from the fleet-average requirement.
The idea was that farmers and other laboring people needed to have
pickups and vans to haul things, and they were such a small percentage of the
driving public that the car companies should have to worry so much about fuel
economy in the design of their trucks.
But it wasn't hard to predict that suddenly "truck" was going to include a
lot of vehicles that don't look much like what trucks looked like in the 1970s.
Minivans, you see, are trucks.
SUVs are trucks.
They don't count against the total.
The people who buy SUVs and minivans aren't buying them because they
want to waste gasoline. They're buying them because most of them have room
for lots of people -- even fullgrown people -- inside.
OK, for a while there, people were buying SUVs because they were a kind
of status symbol. But those days are long gone -- in fact, SUVs are kind of
dorky and annoying to everybody else on the road. But they're big, and
Americans like and, yes, need big cars, even if they have to pretend their trucks
in order to get them.
What's the solution?
Well, in some cities they've actually tried the remarkable idea of having a
public transportation system that actually goes somewhere useful and runs
often enough that it's a viable alternative to cars. But that will never be tried
in North Carolina, so let's not waste time discussing it.
The new hybrid cars are a terrific answer, and as battery size continues
to shrink, hybrids may become the dominant form of car in the future. They
work great -- plenty of power -- and the fuel economy is amazing. Certainly I'd
buy one if I could find one that would hold five adults and have room for six
bags in the trunk.
Meanwhile, though, I hear a bunch of whiners complaining that
government regulation is terrible and gas economy would actually have
improved faster and farther if we'd let the free market have its way.
This is so dumb you don't know whether to laugh or cry. The very fact
that SUVs and minivans have been so popular, the fact that the Taurus (and,
by the way, the Crown Vic, Cadillac, and Town Car) had to shrink in order to
meet the EPA guidelines, shows you exactly what the free market would have
done.
Left to itself, the market would have made huge cars, if not the rule, then
at least more common than they are.
Instead, we've found a delicate balance -- forced by the government --
that vastly improved the pollution levels in most American cities and cut our
fuel use by an amazing amount compared to what it would have been with our
population growth since the 1970s.
The power of government to level the playing field can be, and usually is,
used in ridiculous ways. But when it's used right, it does good things.
Remember, you old people like me, what it was like when cars only came
with AM radios? How did it change?
It was a government rule that required that FM radios be included as
original equipment on all cars. Until then, FM wasn't making any headway
because there were only a few public radio stations operating on FM, so there
was nothing much to listen to if you got a radio that could receive FM.
And it made no sense to open more FM stations because nobody listened
to FM radios in their cars.
But as soon as all cars had to have FM, then it made sense to open new
stations and suddenly there was something to listen to. And today AM is the
orphan stepchild of radio.
So when it comes to fuel economy, I'm not saying that the EPA goals are
bad. Nor am I saying that Americans are evil to want big cars. Both are
reasonable goals, and in the back and forth dance between government
regulation and the free market, the people who really want big cars have got
them, and yet we've also saved a lot of gasoline (though not enough) and cut
back on automobile pollution per population.
Not a bad track record in the constant tug of war between the market
and government regulation.
It's the American way. Don't let one team get all the power. Make 'em
duke it out.
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