MAGAZINE REVIEWS

The idiocy of SUVs

(Harper's, Mother Jones, Jerusalem Report) by Seth Rogovoy

(GREAT BARRINGTON, Mass., April 12, 2001) - My kids call them "dorkmobiles." I don't know where they got the name from - I think it might have been my wife who came up with it, or taught it to them - but at the risk of offending the last few people I haven't offended in my lifetime as a columnist (to say nothing of my lifetime as a serial offender), it seems like as apt a name as any for so-called sports utility vehicles.

I don't know when it happened, but at some point in the last decade these things landed from outer space in everybody's driveways except mine. You see everyone driving these outlandish trucks-disguised-as-cars: teen-agers, old ladies, midlife-crisis males, soccer moms. What's worse is watching people trying to park these behemoths. It's a funny sight, unless it's your car they're smashing into as they try to maneuver a vehicle they have no business driving and Detroit has no business selling to the average consumer who has no need of a truck.

Harper's Magazine

In "Bad Sports" in the April issue of Harper's, Paul Roberts visits a Ford dealership in an upscale suburb of Seattle - apt choice, there, Paul - to get the lowdown on the Excursion, the newest and tutti del tutti capos of SUVs.

Roberts gives us the goods. "The typical SUV costs as much as a luxury car…yet rides like a truck," he writes. "It's hard to maneuver, harder to park, and possesses all the elegance and charm of a beer cooler. It's tall and bulked out, like some over-muscled gladiator, yet has less cargo space than most minivans or full-size sedans, and is harder for the family to climb into and out of." The facts, says Roberts, belie the popularity and success of these monsters. Nine out of 10 SUV owners will never need its off-road capability.

They were known to be unsafe even before last year's Ford/Firestone fiasco, and of course they're environmental time-bombs with their clock ticking one minute to blast-off. Or, as conservationists refer to them, "industrial Antichrists."

"You'd expect to see SUV's relegated to the flukes and fads corner of the Museum of History and Industry, next to the Edsel or the Corvair," writes Roberts. "Instead, they are the most popular vehicles on America's streets and are getting more so," despite all the safety problems and the astronomical cost of filling their tanks with gas (close to $100 when the price tops out during the summer driving season).

"[T]he fact that sport utilities offer very little sport or utility matters little to those who buy them and not at all to those who sell them," writes Roberts, who then attempts to answer the question, "Why should such a terrible car be so popular?"

Among the answers Roberts postulates are that SUVs were a reaction against the asexuality of family vans in a macho, post-Persian Gulf War climate that scoffed at concerns about energy. "Detroit has always used our insecurities to sell us cars," writes Roberts, and SUVs are "simply the latest example of America's gear fetish [allowing] middle-class white suburbanites pretend to some degree of usefulness."

But this is armchair psychology. More convincing is the economic explanation: the fact that SUVs were "faster and cheaper to design and build than cars" and as "light trucks" were exempt from many pollution and fuel mileage regulations made them immensely more profitable for Detroit - ten times as profitable as the average sedan or minivan, according to Roberts. From there, it's no great leap to see how the auto and oil industries - two of the top sources of campaign contributions - would do all in their power to see that SUVs became bestsellers.

Mother Jones

Speaking of being sold things that are bad for you, in "Prime Time Pushers" in the March/April issue of Mother Jones, Lisa Belkin examines how the deregulation of pharmaceutical advertising has resulted in the full-scale hawking of prescription drugs as if they were just another household product like laundry soap or paper towels.

TV commercials now attempt to convince consumers to buy particular drugs the same way they try to sell them particular cars -- not on the merits of the products themselves, but by preying on viewers' insecurities about their self-image.

Part of the problem is that many viewers mistakenly believe that drug ads are still subject to close scrutiny by the Food and Drug Administration. According to Belkin, drug companies routinely push the envelope of what is acceptable to portray about their drugs, stopping just short of making outright false claims.

Obviously, senior citizens, with their array of ailments including arthritis and osteoporosis and their worries about declining health in general, are both the largest target audience and the easiest prey for the slick advertising campaigns of the pharmaceutical giants.

The Jerusalem Report

Once upon a time, some cultural types decided to leave their homes in the metropolis to set up stakes in a converted factory in an abandoned industrial zone in a remote, forgotten, economically-depressed working-class town. The town's mayor welcomed them and did all he could to provide cheap rent and tax breaks for the artists and performers. In their wake, other artists followed, as did young professionals - architects, teachers, and high-tech businessmen, attracted by the clean air, the beauty of the natural surroundings, and the laid-back quality of life.

Soon, thousands flocked to the former nowheresville for performances, workshops, lectures and other activities.

The story of North Adams? It could be, but it's also the story of Mitzpeh Ramon, a scrappy development town in the Negev Desert of Israel, which has gained a new lease on life after spiraling into near social and economic oblivion.

The story of how Mitzpeh Ramon attracted interest from the outside world is told in "The Lure of the Crater" by Netty C. Gross in the April 23 issue of the biweekly Jerusalem Report.

Gross paints a picture of a bifurcated town. One half still suffers the plague of unemployment and low wage jobs, whlie the other hopes to become a world-class tourist attraction - "Israel's Santa Fe," in the words of the mayor.

In its favor, Mitzpeh Ramon boasts a spectacular 400-square-kilometer crater, "the only kind in the world that has hidden springs in a unique desert terrain," writes Gross. To its detriment, however, the town bears the scarred legacy of Israel's well-intentioned but ill-founded policy of steering new immigrants to remote, desert settlements, thereby condemning them to lives of dead-end economic and social misery. It seems that what has yet to happen in Mitzpeh Ramon - if not in North Adams - is for the powers-that-be to find a way for the indigenous, working-class population to share in the newfound opportunity and wealth that the new, cultural tourism-based industry has brought to the town.

[This column originally appeared in the Berkshire Eagle on April 14, 2001. Copyright Seth Rogovoy 2001. All rights reserved.]