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• Monday, January 5, 2009 11:22 AM

  Bless Me Reader, For I Have Sinned

  Mother Nature here, Father Time is so disappointed in you, Mark, that he's talking a walk around and around the mini park down the street sighing.

  Two kids, friends and groceries does not require a vehicle that does such damage to me and your father and, in the long term, those kids you ferry around. Yet, I understand the appeal.

  Your SUV is new, handsome, and cheap in comparison to what it was a just a year ago. But let's not imagine that your apologies and claim to being an environmentalist are making you question yourself. You wouldn't be asking for our blessings unless you were confident that your consumer driven weakness for shiny, new things is shared by almost every American. The truth is this SUV makes you feel better about yourself.

  In it you can tell yourself that you're not turning into your father (as if that's so bad) or into a stereotype of yuppie that everyone on Fox News pokes at. You can forget that it symbolizes the ineffectiveness of your generation at genuine activism, relying instead on humorous self-deprecation and comical cynicism to "make a stand." Really, son, did you think buying a solar cooker would change the world or did you just presume an impending apocalypse in the style of Hollywood movies rather than mundane behavior?

  Here's the rub: from inside your SUV you fell very big, from outside you look like a weeble, small and about to tip over.

  —MCM Read MCM's other letters
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