Re: not butter, guns

Cecilia A. Baader (cbaader@my-Deja.com)
Thu, 19 Aug 1999 15:10:16 -0700 

I was just having this very conversation last night, as we were trying to sneak our way through the forest of minivans and SUVs on the Eisenhower expressway.

The way I see it is this:  if someone did a study of the populations owning each, one might find that the generation of SUV owners is the same generation of people that spent all of their early adulthood kidding each other about becoming a member of the minivan mafia.  Then that generation got married, had kids, and had to take those selfsame kids to soccer practice.  

And they found that the only way that they could keep that vow not to become a member of the minivan mafia was to own something that was as big as a minivan but not a minivan.

Thus the birth of the SUV.  (Interestingly enough, Camille, I heard an SUV commercial on the radio the other day which branded it not an SUV but an ute.  So there you go, finally an Aussie expression that has made it into the American lexicon.  Or maybe not.  I could quite possibly be the only person in the city of Chicago who knew what they were talking about.  The rest of the city might have been wondering how it's possible to drive a heavy-duty adolescent around town...)

But here's my theory:  people driving SUVs are the only ones who didn't capitulate, who didn't sell out to the man.  I'm now utterly convinced that all the rest of them are phonies.  As long as they stay out of my way in the left lane.

Regards,
Cecilia.
---
"I had a linguistics professor who said that it's man's ability to use language that makes him the dominant species on the planet. That may be. But I think there's one other thing that separates us from animals. We aren't afraid of vacuum cleaners."
-- Jeff Stilson

On Thu, 19 Aug 1999 14:28:32   John Smith wrote:
>The status symbol here is the Mini-van.  If you have
>one, it indicates that you own 2.3 children and earn
>between 40-70,000$ combined income.  I've seen
>commercials for the Subaru Outback, which are nothing
>short of annoying.  That Paul Hogan character is
>tiresome.  How do you feel about having an actor as
>Australia's international icon?  I remember thinking
>Paul was cool by his infamous rubric: 'That's not a
>knife.  That's a knife.'
>
<clip>
>
>--- Camille Scaysbrook <c_scaysbrook@yahoo.com> wrote:
<clip>
>> 
>> I'd like to know if you have the same ridiculous and
>> contemptible
>> phenomenon overseas as we do over here in Australia,
>> which is this: the 4
>> Wheel Drive all-terrain vehicle as status symbol.
>> It's absolutely the
>> social symbol of the upwardly mobile middle class.
>> No mother drives her
>> children to soccer or dancing in anything else. It's
>> the most bizarre and
>> sickening thing ever, they're even actively marketed
>> to the suburbs to the
>> point where there's a model called the Mitsubishi
>> Suburban.
>> 
>> Theories on why the hell this is would be
>> appreciated too. Surely people's
>> psyches aren't so shallow that it's the mere fact
>> that they are higher up
>> than anyone else on the road???
>> 
>> Camille
>> verona_beach@geocities.com



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