Different attitude
I stopped reading and clicking on Curbside Classics when its publisher imposed 'Best Practices for Cultural Re-engineering', which meant censoring out references to normal civilization. Jalopnik seems to retain a more neutral attitude for the time being.

This article takes an appropriate attitude toward one chaotizer:

Speaking on behalf of floppy-haired environmentalists everywhere, casually racist angst man Morrissey urged General Motors to offer vegan-friendly versions of its hybrid and electric vehicles on Monday.

“I’m writing to ask GM to make Chevy’s Volt and Bolt more eco-friendly by giving buyers the option to choose vegan leather interiors—including steering wheels and gear shifts,” wrote the bendy Briton in an open letter addressed to CEO Mary Barra. “GM is named in PETA’s brand-new investigation of cattle ranches, on which animals are branded on the face, electro-shocked, and beaten before they’re slaughtered and used to make leather interiors.”

Well, if you want vegan cars you should buy old cars. American cars from 1940 to 1980 used very little leather and lots of plastic. Leather was considered to be utilitarian. Tough and waterproof, suitable for truck seats or roadsters. The chauffeur sat on leather while the rich passengers sat on wool broadcloth. Plastic was new and COOOOOL.

And if you're really concerned with eco shit, you should also buy old cars for a simpler reason. Maintaining an old item is less wasteful than making new items.

But Mr or Ms Morrissey is not really concerned with any of that. He and/or she and/or ve is just mindlessly fashionable.

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Immediately after reading that excrescence of modern taste, I read this in the latest (paper) Collectible Auto magazine, in an article about mid-60s Dodges:

Drivers made one interesting complaint about the dash: The air-conditioning vents blew ash off the cigarette when you reached toward the ashtray.

Different set of assumptions, to say the least. Modern cars lack ashtrays entirely.

Smokers and Deplorables are pretty much the same set**. A Venn diagram would show two circles with 90% overlap.

1966: Products must be designed to accommodate and please the people who buy them.

2016: Products must be designed to exclude and exterminate Deplorables. We don't want Deplorable customers or Deplorable money. We only want COOOOOL VEGAN money.


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** Why do Deplorables smoke? Same reason that inmates smoke. Tobacco helps you to survive futility. When you're trapped in a totalitarian regime that can't be improved or removed by your own efforts, tobacco keeps you going.

Labels: Make or break

  ¶ 3:40 AM