"Indoctrinate?"

It's one thing not to like bag searches, it's another to make this leap in vocabulary.

Whatever you think about bag searches or the TSA, "indoctrinate" seems a bit high-pitched for a graduation ceremony item with a ceremonial speaker from a relevantly related agency.

by jnb on Apr 4, 2011 8:41 am • link • report

Wow, that PJ O'Rourke rant is aggressively stupid or he needs help if he truly sees the world the most myopic of ways.

by R. Myers on Apr 4, 2011 8:41 am • link • report

PJ O'Rourke piece is pure satire. But he is a libertarian, so I bet he is not a fan of bike lanes anyways.

by RJ on Apr 4, 2011 9:08 am • link • report

O'Rourke is a humorist by trade, and funny enough to hold his end up, e.g., as an occasional guest on "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me". But a lot of his shtick boils down to: "Look at those weirdos. What a bunch of weirdos, amirite?" Which attitude passes all too easily these days for serious policy discussion.

by tdcjames on Apr 4, 2011 9:09 am • link • report

Nope, I think it's humor. Can you honestly read these lines without laughing?

"The bicycle is a parody of a wheeled vehicle—a donkey cart without the cart, where you do the work of the donkey."

"The bicycle is the only method of conveyance worse than feet. You can walk up three flights of stairs carrying one end of a sofa. Try that on a bicycle."

"Also, only a few bicycles are needed to take up as much space as my Chevrolet Suburban—just one if its rider is wobbling all over the place while trying to Tweet. And my Suburban seats eight. The answer to traffic congestion is lower taxes so that legions of baby boomers my age can afford to retire and stay home."

Good stuff.

by saam on Apr 4, 2011 9:10 am • link • report

Re: PJ O'Rourke

Do you guys read this before posting or did you skim? It's obvious satire. Get some thicker skin.

by JMG on Apr 4, 2011 9:25 am • link • report

I think that O'Rourke article may have been satire of which The Onion would be proud... If it wasn't, then the dude needs some serious help.

by Josh C. on Apr 4, 2011 9:29 am • link • report

For a Website that posted nothing but April Fool's jokes on Friday, I'm amazed you missed the obvious satire.

by Jess C. on Apr 4, 2011 9:35 am • link • report

Bike lanes make crazy writers really crazy: How far will bike lane haters go and when do they turn into self-parody? PJ O'Rourke tries to vault far beyond that line with the most ridiculous, whiny, ignorant anti-bike screed yet, arguing that cyclists exhale lots of CO2 and their shorts look strange. (WSJ)
-----

David, you do know P.J. O'Rourke is a satirist, right? Taking him seriously is like doing an in-depth sociological critique of Gene Weingarten's or Dave Barry's latest piece. EVERYTHING he writes is by definition some form of self-parody. There are definitely bigger fish to fry than him.

by Mike O on Apr 4, 2011 9:37 am • link • report

Anytime you see the phrase "GAO is preparing to issue" keep in mind that what are you seeing has been leaked by someone on the Hill. I don't know anything about this report, but I do know that reports are often spun in ways that do not reflect that report.

PJ O'Rourke is a satarist. The piece is humor. I'm sure he doesn't like bike lanes, but this is a guy who has titled books "Eat the Rich" and "Give War a Chance." He also has a classic piece on why God is Republican and Santa Clause is a Democrat.

by Kate on Apr 4, 2011 9:37 am • link • report

There's a difference between a joke post, which is what we did on April Fool's, and trying to make serious policy points by making then a little nutty as a way to get the medicine to go down and people to read them.

by David Alpert on Apr 4, 2011 9:41 am • link • report

The WSJ article is clearly satire but also infuses several policy tactics that have been used (non-satirically) against bicycle riders in the past, like that they need to pay their own way, induce traffic, take up parking spaces, etc.

by Scoot on Apr 4, 2011 10:07 am • link • report

I have removed a comment by 'sick of 'em' which uses ad hominem attacks and expresses hope that cyclists get hurt. I am banning this user who has now posted similarly unacceptable comments numerous times.

by David Alpert on Apr 4, 2011 10:34 am • link • report

PJ O'Rourke piece is pure satire. But he is a libertarian, so I bet he is not a fan of bike lanes anyways.

Actually, to be precise, O'Rourke is a "glibertarian". He hates subsidized facilities like bike lanes, but loves the massive subsidies that go towards the accouterments of suburbia (i.e. subsidized roads, bloated military protecting access to cheap oil, etc, etc...)

You can always tell a right-wing "satirist" because they're busy comforting the comfortable and afflicting the afflicted.

by oboe on Apr 4, 2011 10:37 am • link • report

@Dave

Go read Swift's "A Modest Proposal", and then lets meet for dinner. I know a great place that serves Irish infant carpaccio.

-------------------
There's a difference between a joke post, which is what we did on April Fool's, and trying to make serious policy points by making then a little nutty as a way to get the medicine to go down and people to read them.

by TGEoA on Apr 4, 2011 11:27 am • link • report

TGEoA: Please quote other people by putting their comments above your own comments in italics, not by pasting the whole thing below a ----- line.

by David Alpert on Apr 4, 2011 11:32 am • link • report

Too funny----

Bike lane advocates also claim that bicycles are environmentally friendly, producing less pollution and fewer carbon emissions than automobiles. But bicycle riders do a lot of huffing and puffing, exhaling large amounts of CO2. And whether a bicycle rider, after a long bicycle ride, is cleaner than the exhaust of a modern automobile is open to question.

by TGEoA on Apr 4, 2011 11:34 am • link • report

@Dave

Sorry, I'm used to usenet style. Have you considered adding RTF controls to the site? Many people don't know how to use tags or find them onerous.

by TGEoA on Apr 4, 2011 11:37 am • link • report

@TGEoA

Bike lane advocates also claim that bicycles are environmentally friendly, producing less pollution and fewer carbon emissions than automobiles. But bicycle riders do a lot of huffing and puffing, exhaling large amounts of CO2. And whether a bicycle rider, after a long bicycle ride, is cleaner than the exhaust of a modern automobile is open to question.

No, it's not an open question.

Human CO2 (i.e. exhaling) emissions come from humans generating energy - we burn carbohydrates, mixed with oxygen, in our cells, and breathe out CO2. The carbon we emit, however, has already been accounted for in the carbon cycle. The stuff we eat as food already absorbed CO2 in the first place - the net impact is zero.

http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/fq/emissions.html

The average person, through the natural process of breathing, produces approximately 2.3 pounds (1 kg) of carbon dioxide per day. The actual amount depends strongly on the person’s activity level. However, this carbon dioxide is part of a natural closed-loop cycle and does not contribute to the greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere. Natural processes of photosynthesis (in plants) and respiration (in plants and animals) maintain a balance of oxygen and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Thus, the carbon dioxide from natural process is not included in greenhouse gas inventories.

Even if there was a net impact, the scale of emissions isn't anywhere near that of burning fossil fuels. A human cycling might emit more CO2 than a human driving a car, but when you factor in the gas, the person in the car emits far more.

by Alex B. on Apr 4, 2011 11:45 am • link • report

Wait wait... so David missed the satire.. and then he's sticking to his guns about it being serious?

At what point can we invoke Poe's Law?

Also @Alex B... [not sure if serious.jpg]..

by Andrew in DC on Apr 4, 2011 11:58 am • link • report

There's a difference between a joke post, which is what we did on April Fool's, and trying to make serious policy points by making then a little nutty as a way to get the medicine to go down and people to read them.

It seemed that most of the April Fools day posts were humorous attempts at making serious policy points: Safe driving (AAA), inappropriate spending (Tommy Wells's tricked-out bike), and bag searches (shoe searches).

by ah on Apr 4, 2011 11:59 am • link • report

Suburban areas in the region had more people become unemployed in the economic downturn than in the "urban core," and are recovering more slowly.

Note that the piece only cites percentages. This may distort reality. If you have fewer unemployed, and you get more, the percentage change is larger than when you already have more unemployed people and get a bunch more. Overall, unemployment is lower in VA and MD than in DC.

by Jasper on Apr 4, 2011 12:00 pm • link • report

Alex, Alex, Alex... There you go using that liberally biased science stuff again. Why should I think that hard? It's so much easier to wait for a drug addict on the radio to tell me what to think about this!

(And I would not be surprised if that drug addict lifts this satire and passes it as fact. Where he is good he is not original, and where he is original, he is not good.)

by Dave J on Apr 4, 2011 12:05 pm • link • report

"In fact, bike lanes don't necessarily lessen car travel. A study by the U.K. Department for Transport found that the installation of "cycle facilities" in eight towns and cities resulted in no change in the number of people driving cars. Bike lanes don't even necessarily increase bike riding. In the late 1980s and early 1990s the Dutch government spent $945 million on bicycle routes without any discernible effect on how many Dutch rode bicycles."

So, did he make this up ... or not ...? Maybe our resident Dutch expert can fill us in on this one ... ?

by Lance on Apr 4, 2011 12:23 pm • link • report

ah: What I'm trying to say is that while we just made up stats out of whole cloth because we were obviously reporting fake news, O'Rourke is indeed trying to be silly, but only to make a point that he seems to really mean in a way that's over the top. He's still trying to peddle bike hate, he's just trying to do it satirically.

Swift's "Modest Proposal" is not trying to say what it seems to say. He doesn't actually think people should eat children. O'Rourke seems to actually think cycling is bad.

by David Alpert on Apr 4, 2011 12:30 pm • link • report

@Alex - The joke that you missed is that cyclists often smell bad after a long ride.

@Dave - PJ isn't hating on cycling, but rather cycling activists because We, the majority who do not ride bicycles, are being forced to sacrifice our left turns, parking places and chances to squeeze by delivery trucks so that an affluent elite can feel good about itself for getting wet, cold, tired and run-over. Our tax dollars are being used to subsidize our annoyance.

BTW, since it is such a beautiful day I'm going to go for a 10 mile bike ride (seriously) and when I get back take the convertible out for a spin.

by TGEoA on Apr 4, 2011 1:03 pm • link • report

I thought the O'Rourke thing was funny even though as a heavy bikelane user I felt like the butt of just about every joke.

This one was ironic though:

"Bike lanes can become an acceptable part of the urban landscape, if bicycle riders are willing to pay their way. And if they pay enough, maybe we'll even give them a lift during the next snow storm."

Gee, thanks, PJ, but I'm ok. I was able to ride around during the snowstorms in DC (and walk to work and to amenities in my neighborhood) while motorists were trapped in their homes at the end of their miserable cul de sacs.

by Ward 1 Guy on Apr 4, 2011 2:10 pm • link • report

Swift's "Modest Proposal" had an actual point. It's entirely unclear what, if anything, the point of O'Rourke's "humor" is. I think it's mostly just bad writing, not anything more than that.

by David desJardins on Apr 4, 2011 2:11 pm • link • report

David: did you even look at how the poll was carried out? It appeared to me to be another "self reporting" poll. No one went door to door to ask residents, it was on line. As such, it still doesn't represent the views of the community any more than showing up at one church on a single Sunday shows the views of Christianity.

It would be nice if local journalists would not use polls with such obvious reporting flaws to support an opinion one way or another.

by eb on Apr 4, 2011 3:04 pm • link • report

I had to check the date to make sure this wasn't an April Fool's Day article. It's not. Based on that fact and the fact that is a WSJ article, I'm pretty sure that O'Rourke is serious about his anti-cycling stance. I wish it was a joke.

I agree with David that this satire is unlike Swift because O'Rourke believes too much of what he is writing, which is, on top of everything else, not funny at all.

by Josh Arkin on Apr 4, 2011 3:26 pm • link • report

I recognized the PJO piece was supposed to be funny but i was distracted by so much ignorance/mis-information imbedded in the jokes. For example the bit about some people wanting a nanny state and exchanging a briefcase for a backback (if you ride a bike) going a long to perpetuate childhood. tHe glaring (willful?) ignorance that using paniers instead of a backpack is both more practical and safer distracted me. thats just one example.

by Tina on Apr 4, 2011 3:36 pm • link • report

The PJO piece is more interested in being funny than persuasive. It is intentionally filled with exaggeration to achieve its primary goal of comedy, at the expense of any other goal. It's impossible to argue with someone who is exaggerating on purpose. When I did stand-up comedy back in the day, I used to have people come and want to argue with me after I got off stage and I would just look at them with disbelief. Everything I said was designed to get a laugh. Any truth was coincidental. I never had any intention of defending any of it, and I might even disagree with the politics of it. Don't be that guy who argues with me after I come off stage.

I think PJO probably does dislike giving road space to cyclists, he's a big car guy after all, but certainly not to the extent that he's pretending to here.

As for the studies he references, it looks like he went no farther than Wikipedia to do his research (both those stats come straight out of the "segregated facilities" entry). But the studies he cite are significantly more nuanced than the wikipedia entry he copied makes them seem.

For example the Brittish study determines that cycle routes alone were not enough to induce cycling in England, even though they were in most other European countries and "To increase cycle use, facilities for cycling need to be part of a comprehensive transport strategy that includes demand management and traffic reduction policies." That is hardly an indictment of bike lanes.

The Dutch study did indeed show that kms biked between 1980 and 1994 stayed flat. But it also showed that during the same time cycling became much safer. And cycling already accounted for over 20% of all trips. How much does one expect it to go up?

And there are plenty of other studies, more recent studies from here in the United States (making it more applicable due to a temporal and spatial relationship) that show that bike lanes do induce cycling.

Still, O'Rourke doesn't care. He's just trying to make people laugh.

by David C on Apr 4, 2011 5:03 pm • link • report

Judging by some of the comments it looks like PJ really ticked off the audience he was aiming for. Bravo.

PS -- Very windy day for a bike ride. It was like the hand of God was pushing me back on every stroke.

by TGEoA on Apr 4, 2011 5:11 pm • link • report

Still, O'Rourke doesn't care. He's just trying to make people laugh.

And--more importantly to his core audience--piss off "liberals". Actually, the fascinating thing is, conservatives will laugh at things that aren't even particularly funny if there's a chance that some imaginary liberal boogeyman will be pissed off. Check YouTube and notice the footage of the crowd on the old Rush Limbaugh TV show. It's a bit terrifying.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WnSJFfpJ9m8

by oboe on Apr 4, 2011 5:21 pm • link • report

@oboe, are you suggesting a correlation between being Conservative and greater than expected registration of schadenfreud?

by Tina on Apr 4, 2011 5:29 pm • link • report

I'm sure there's a 30+ German word to describe the phenomenon, but it's not exactly schadenfreud. It's something more akin to "joy at the prospect that jane fonda was mildly irritated by something". And it really is one of, like, three non-negotiable planks in the right-wing agenda.

by oboe on Apr 4, 2011 6:00 pm • link • report

The PJ O'Rourke piece was humorous; the reaction of the target of his satire was even more entertaining.

Lighten up folks!

by Fritz on Apr 4, 2011 7:59 pm • link • report

I can't even tell what the target of his satire was. Was he satirizing people who criticize bike lanes?

by David desJardins on Apr 4, 2011 8:03 pm • link • report