Car Culture
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Ad Nauseam 2010: The Year in Car Commercials
Car sales are up, auto shows are packing them in, and the GM IPO was oversubscribed, but there may be no surer indicator of the auto industry’s recovery than the renewed avalanche of car ads rumbling across every medium. And there’s no better way to get a glimpse of what a born-again car culture might look like than to stay on the couch for a spell, un-mute the TV, and watch—that’s right, on purpose—a sample of 2010’s ads selling us our car-centric way of life. Here are some of the year’s most egregious attempts to get us into the dealership by conflating car ownership with American values.
December 13, 2010
Fred Barnes: Americans Mainly Want to Stay in Their Cars
After yesterday's electoral drubbing, the Obama administration will have to deal with a starkly different Congress when they make their expected push for a multi-year transportation bill early next year. We know that some influential House Republicans, like John Mica, don't necessarily believe that bigger highways will solve America's transportation problems. And we know that some pro-transit voices in Washington originate from the right. But no one expects the GOP ascendancy to make transportation reform any easier.
November 3, 2010
Electric Car Fever and Polar Bear Halos
Over the next few months, electric cars will start rolling out of showrooms and onto American roads. They’ve been a long time coming.
October 12, 2010
BP, Toyota, and the Illusion of the Car System Techno-Fix
Last Christmas, an Oregon couple driving with their baby in the backseat followed erroneous GPS instructions and got stranded on wilderness roads in a Cascades snowstorm. Twelve hours later, they had given up hope and taped a farewell video. While a rescue party fortunately was able to save them, they no doubt wished they hadn’t allowed their belief in modern electronics to override their own clear eyes and good instincts.
August 5, 2010
The Car Loan Loophole: How Auto Dealers Dodged Financial Reform
The fat lady hasn’t sung yet, but the country’s auto dealers have been exempted from the financial reform bill now in its final stage in Congress. Given that the purpose of the bill is to protect Americans from harmful manipulation by the people selling them financial products, this is a pretty stunning development. The nation’s auto dealers either provide or broker most of the $850 billion worth of currently outstanding car loans across America. That’s a pile of financial product: It’s more than household credit card debt and second only to home mortgages.
July 13, 2010
Jon Stewart Lambastes 40 Years of Presidential Posturing on Oil
Jon Stewart fired one of his more brilliant salvos last night, synthesizing 40 years of political posturing around energy independence and America's addiction to foreign oil in just under eight minutes of satire. Drawing on this week's speech from President Obama, who urged a vague new energy future, Stewart skewered the latest White House rhetoric with clips from the past seven presidents, dating to Nixon, as they also pledged to get us off oil.
June 17, 2010
New York Drivers Among the Most Ignorant of Traffic Laws
With the summer "driving season" almost upon us, a startling new survey finds that about 20 percent of American motorists -- close to 38 million people -- don't know enough to pass a written driving test.
May 27, 2010
Cartoon Tuesday: Little Green Man and the Lizard Squeezins
Sometimes it takes an outsider's perspective to see things clearly. So what would an extra-terrestrial think of humankind's dependence on fossil fuels? In light of the devastation being unleashed off the shores of the Gulf states, cartoonist and recent Pulitzer recipient Mark Fiore files this brilliant summation of the absurdly self-destructive lengths we earthlings go to for our "lizard squeezins."
May 18, 2010
Is New York City the Car Culture Capital of America?
When you hear the words "car culture," what -- or where -- do you think of? The freeways of Los Angeles? The factories of Detroit? With its new show, "Cars, Culture and the City," the Museum of the City of New York attempts to retell the history of the automobile with New York City at the very center.
March 29, 2010
A Fresh Look at American Sprawl
American advocates for livable streets know that our addiction to the automobile is almost without peer. We know that we've given our land to driving lanes and parking lots and our air to exhaust fumes. Nevertheless, it can be hard to step outside of the car culture we've spent our lives marinating in and see the country with a new perspective.
March 8, 2010