Race War! Race War!

In the clip below, I want you to mentally make some substitutions.

Stan is a level-headed bicyclist.
Token is a motorist.
And Eric Cartman is the main stream media.



The attention on this cyclist-versus-motorist feud the last few weeks has been incredible. It started with the cutesey "Look, the drunk bicyclist went ape on a driver — and it turned out to be another bicyclist! Ho ho ho, isn't that funny?"

But then, like the Blob, it grew. First, with the video of the cyclist clinging to a windshield wiper. Then, with the pickup t-boned by a cyclist.

And most recently, the Critical Mass debacle in Seattle, where a gang of militant cyclists jumped a guy who was just trying to get to dinner. Now, all of the sudden, Newsweek is parachuting in and before you know it, the New York Times will be out here with their pretentious "Mr. Potter" this and "Mrs. Jones" that on second reference.

Is this the best we can do?

We're in the middle of an election year, tiptoeing (as a region, anyway) around a recession — for the first time anyone can remember, by the way, that Oregon wasn't thrown into the financial dunk tank first — and three incidents, all of which can be attributed to morons, constitute wall-to-wall coverage?

I don't think so. I think we're just inflaming motorists like myself (my first thought — if I was the guy in the Subaru up in Seattle, I would have been mobile the second someone jumped on my car, and I don't care who's in the way!) and inciting bicyclists who may buy into a mob mentality.

Instead of looking at the "new dynamic" between cyclists and motorists, how about we look at the psyches of these morons — the "Wait, did my windshield wiper grow a human-shaped tumor???" guy and our friends at Critical Mass — and expose the true idiocy that's brought these stories to the fore?

Contention rarely leads to consensus. Bicyclists have real needs, but unless the majority of motorists get on board with those needs, we'll never call those needs accomplishments.