Six Mile Poll

Bourne with an Opinion

Letters to the Editor

SUVs unpatriotic?? YES!!

Dear Editor,

In regards to Sandy House's "SUVs unpatriotic??" (Jan. 28), House never makes reference to the specific Arianna Huffington piece. How is the reader who does not know Huffington writes for salon.com supposed to know whether they agree with her or House?

If it isn't necessary to have read the piece to have an opinion, here is mine. Huffington is a social critic. Pointing fingers and turning people against each other is her job. I could be wrong, but I think at least part of her argument is based on the SUV as status-cum-conformity symbol.

What once set people apart becomes commonplace. Get those MTV abs "by any means necessary," take that SUV, hang some cheap plastic beads from the rearview, yak on your cell phone at every intersection and you're set.

Oh, and slap a big ole' American flag sticker on the back. That's the clincher. Many people appropriate these things simply because it's popular.

This is the sort of "groupthink" Huffington usually stands against, and that is a good thing. She gets people talking and thinking.

House seems to have bought what her TV's commercials tell/sell her; that SUV owners are all soccer moms, backpackers, mountain climbers and baseball coaches.

Look around at the real people not acting in commercials.

Many people in SUVs are just as fat and lazy as others. Just watching those commercials is exercise enough for most of them.

As for SUVs' safety, I was involved in an accident several years ago in which an SUV struck the front of my vehicle. My car stayed relatively stationary while the SUV that struck me (which was not speeding) flipped three times. I couldn't believe what I saw. It was a huge vehicle, but bounced down the road like a balloon.

Is our patriotism just on the surface too? Is that why we feel the need to plaster it there, the bigger the better? Sometimes I think it's just a bunch of hot air. It's become a cliché, but I think anyone like Huffington, who can criticize with clarity, is a model American, in the best sense of the word.

John Fisher
General Studies