Actor Mathew Modine votes aye over at HuffPo, calling our four-wheeled friends “the new pariahs.” After informing us that the world’s resources are finite, bicycles rule, and that there’s much to be learned from a baby’s first steps, Modine finally gets around to making his argument.
“We must look at the automobile as a cigarette–a cancer stick–a nail in our collective coffin. The sexy lifestyle that the tobacco industry sold to us contains the same advertising lies and poison which the automobile industry sold and continues to sell to the world. Look at the ads for automobiles and you’ll begin to recognize the lies. You’ll see open roads with happy smiling drivers. Ask yourself, When was the last time I was NOT stuck in traffic?”
Interestingly, the lasting impression from Modine’s rant is that actors’ opinions are like all forms of advertising: facile and misleading.
Over at Reason’s Hit & Run blog, Nick Gillespie tears into Modine with gusto.
“Can everyone who started smoking Newports because they thought they’d become Alive with Pleasure! please signal aye via their vocoder box? The last dupes in the tobacco game must have been the folks that Ronald Reagan sent Chesterfields to at Christmas time.
But by all means, let’s exhume the corpses of Jack Kerouac and Dinah Shore and Gary Numan (who may not be technically dead in anything other than a career sense) and put them on trial for making cars sexy! Tawny Kitaen, you stand accused of not simply destroying the clearcoat finish on a half-dozen vehicles in that Whitesnake video but of raising demand for automobiles and CO2 destroying hairspray for a good chunk of the 1980s!”
Gillespie probably meant ozone-destroying, but the point is well made. It didn’t take a bunch of morally bankrupt Mad Men to make cars sexy. They’re just drawn that way, as Jessica Rabbit would say. More importantly, cars may seem like polluting pariahs when you’re stuck in traffic on the way to a Hollywood cocktail party, but for most of America they’re still an indispensable part of everyday life.
Gillespie concludes, “the post perfectly captures the moralizing smugitude of the leisured class, so if it has been a while since you fully imbibed a head-up-his-ass Hollywood solipsist, read the whole thing here.” We couldn’t agree more.
Funny thing is, many people say the same thing – regarding addiction – about movies and television.
Not to mention air…
I always look to actors for profound insights into important topics. Thanks, Mathew. You’ve changed my life.
I mean it.
Sure thing, sport.
Just as soon as you downgrade that 12,000 sq ft house.
Ok, Modine, put your money where your (oversized) mouth is. Next time you get hired to make a movie, bicycle to the location instead of taking a (most likely private) jet. After all, you need to break your addiction to air travel because those things use a lot more fuel per passenger than automobiles do.
When you get there, you need to walk or bike from the airport to the hotel. Oh, and no limos to whisk you from your luxury suite to the set. Nope. You can walk, run or bike there too. Or even better, pitch a tent on location. That way you won’t see the traffic every day that is so obviously morally repugnant to you.
And better make sure your next movie doesn’t show you enjoying any kind of “sexy lifestyle” accentuated by fast cars, he-man trucks or any other kind of motorized transportation. It looks like from now on you’ll have to make movies about the Amish lifestyle as that’s the only thing that would come close to fitting in with your elitist blathering.
Oh, and one more thing. No one gives a shit what you think.
Hey Matt, are you a vegetarian? If not, you’re adding more pollution than I do. In fact, just so I can pollute as much as you, I’m turning my AC on full blast with the windows open, the stove on, the stereo blaring while watching porn.
Mr. Modine – another shining example of “tool-itude”.
Yes, something that represents one of man’s greatest technological achievements, and that satisfies the basic desire in man and in all animals for mobility, is exactly the same as some dried out weeds wrapped in pieces of paper that derive 90% of their utility from an addiction that would not exist if the user had never smoked (btw, former smoker, still drive).
Public transportation will never create as many jobs, or as much societal benefit, as building, selling and maintaining cars, along with providing an infrastructure for them to drive on.
Where I live I actually drive my car, hard, there isn’t much traffic. Modine might not be able to get to them on his bicycle, but I know personally that there are some very fun roads in California also.
geeber: Spot on. TV and movies are much more like cigarettes than cars are. Beyond delivering important information, in which TV has been decimated by the internet, it is just mind numbed people sitting around absorbing crap.
he was pretty cool in full metal jacket
does he even do anything nowadays? sounds like a has-been to me
To paraphrase: “Bike Nazis. I hate these guys.”
So when I have a job that isn’t 40 miles from home, I may consider biking again. But only if my employer’s ok with me showing up an hour and a half late. Or never at all, since a cyclist gets hit about as often as squirrls around here.
@Frank Williams:
“Oh, and one more thing. No one gives a shit what you think.”
LOL excellent exclamation point.
It is very painful to watch our youth and culture destroyed as these uneducated actors bloviate and pontificate and become the new educated class.
I challenge anyone to watch Larry King interview someone for an hour.
Hey can we force all Porsche owners to put one of those thongs on their “whale tails.” lol Oh and I want to see the front end of that car, is it wearing a bra?
I love how these actors can preach all this enviromental crap while the profession that gives them the fame and fortune is so environmentally UNFRIENDLY. Another Hollywood hypocrit.
He looks to be confused also, movies and actors were the biggest promoters of cigarette’s and still are. All other advertising was minor compared to making sure that glamorous Hollywood star made people want to smoke like them.
What is the deal with the thong car?
Oh yeah his name is spelled wrong, it’s MaTThew.
Some actors, in fact, have decent educations. Some even went to Ivy League schools. Of course this means that they’ve been dumbed down by the educational system while thinking they’re smart. And some entertainers are actually pretty smart. The late Ron Silver comes to mind.
Modine doesn’t love bicycles anymore than I do. I’ve used a bike for commuting and transportation, as well as recreation and exercise for 15 years, riding up to 4500 miles a year. While I share some of Modine’s feelings about bicycles, and they are great fun to ride, primarily I like them because they are very efficient machines (and because it’s one form of exercise where my short stubby legs aren’t much of a disadvantage thanks to something called leverage). The modern “safety” bicycle frame hasn’t changed it’s basic design in over a century, because it’s one of mankind’s great inventions.
That being said, I like cars for the same reason I like bikes, because I like machines and technology. The thing is that none of the the alternative or sustainable energy and transportation solutions that Modine endorses would be possible were it not for the development of the auto industry. The bicycle industry itself is perhaps one degree of separation removed from the automotive and other modern industries. Modern bicycles were developed contemporaneously with the development of the practical automobile and the two industries were interrelated early on. The modern safety bicycle’s design, the diamond frame, chain drive, and pneumatic tired bicycle, was fixed by 1898, after two decades of development. Siegfried Marcus first put a gasoline engine on a car in 1870 and Daimler & Benz made the first practical autos in the late 1880s. Throw in the early motorcycle pioneers, like Harley & the Davidsons, who were mounting engines on bicycles and it’s pretty hard to say that bicycles would have been developed without the simultaneous development of the automobile industry or vice versa. The car industry has been the basis of worldwide industrial development, with collateral development of steel, aluminum and chemical industries. All those industries make alternative energies possible.
What many green folks don’t realize is that none of the solutions they propose could be developed without an industrial infrastructure. You can’t have a green future without industrial development.
Getting back to Modine’s main cause, bicycles, I’m about to go pick up some embroidery stabilizer. The nearest JoAnn Fabrics is about 9 miles away and I’ll ride my bike. This time of day it would take about 20-25 minutes to drive, whether by freeway or surface streets. In my current state of fitness I can cruise at about 18 mph, so I wouldn’t really save much time driving over biking. I would save about 20 minutes, some sweat and about a gallon of gas. Of course if I drove, all those ladies shopping at JoAnn wouldn’t be able to scope out my bike shorts. Lycra doesn’t hide much.
But is my bicycle environmentally benign? It has a titanium frame, wheels with aluminum rims and stainless steel spokes, a front suspension fork made of aluminum and steel, rubber tubes and tires (with aramid fibers), aluminum seat post handlebar and bar stem, and other components made of things mined from the ground (minerals and petrochemicals). Bikes don’t grow on trees. They require iron mines and foundries, bauxite mines and huge amounts of electricity to make aluminum, and all the other products of the industrial revolution.
To be sure it uses less raw materials than a car, but just about everything industrial that you need to make cars, you also need to make bicycles.
I would love to see Modine biking to work in the snow in Boston.
When was the last time I was NOT stuck in traffic?
This morning. In Boston. Smooth sailing on Storrow Drive, as usual.
Maybe where you live you are stuck in traffic… not me. Up yours, Mathew!
Let me fisk Modine a bit more:
The bicycle provides a greater sense of self-propulsion because it can carry us further and faster than our feet.
Faster perhaps, but not further. Actually, you can walk places that you can’t ride a bike.
At some point during the mid 19th century, during the height of the industrial revolution, the love of two-wheeled transportation began to catch hold in different corners of the world. Since that time there have been countless shapes and forms. But each design provides the rider with the same freedom that the first model gave its operator, the ability to get from one place to another quickly and in style.
While the penny farthing high wheeler was indeed a fad, they were difficult to ride, not very safe, and not liked by women. As I pointed out above, practical, safe bicycles didn’t arrive on the scene until the turn of the 20th century, not the mid 19th.
Sometimes I feel like I am flying when I ride my bike.
I find it safer to think about the contact patch between the wheels and the road.
It’s exciting to turn a corner and suddenly find myself in a sea of other bicyclists.
Only if you’re on a group ride. I badly injured my back coming around a corner and suddenly finding another cyclist riding in the other direction.
They seem to share this feeling of self-empowerment.
Or maybe it’s just a heightened sense of self-righteousness. I sometimes ride with a sports club on their weekly rides. Most of the riders are great folks, but bikies are into fashion like anyone else. After years of riding I showed up with a high zoot bike and suddenly I had credibility with some of the riders. “Cool bike, dude”. My bike is unpainted, titanium doesn’t rust, but I’ve been tempted to paint it and put some Huffy decals on it.
In love with the knowledge that, as they pass through the air that surrounds them, they are not polluting what we all share and breathe.
While Matthew was busy taking drama classes, some of us took biology and know that humans exhale CO2. A few years ago, while taking graduate engineering courses in hazardous waste mgmt, I calculated the amount of increased CO2 output of a human exercising at aerobic rates and found out that it’s on the same order of magnitude per travel time as a four cylinder gasoline engined car. If I recall, a car put out about 4 times the CO2 as a person huffing and puffing on a bike, so if you carpool a car might actually put out less CO2 than the same number of people riding bikes.
Bicyclists are free from the petroleum products that have compromised our global environment.
Hey Matthew, look at the tires on your bike. Also, since you’re a serious bikie, you probably have some carbon fiber or other plastic composite parts on your expensive bike. That rubber, carbon fiber and plastic are petroleum products.
They don’t have to worry about paying for parking, tipping valets, car insurance, car inspections or car maintenance.
The do have to worry about carrying locks that weigh 25% as much as your bike does just so folks won’t steal it, finding a safe place to lock it, fixing a flat so you don’t get to work late, or hitting a pothole and getting tossed to the road. Bicyclists also have to replace tires & tubes on a regular basis as well as replace worn components. Last year I need a new rear hub and wheel, two new tires, and a few tubes, plus replacement cleats for my pedals. Bikes are cheaper than cars, but it’s not an inexpensive hobby.
An entry level properly fitted bike shop bike will cost about $300. A custom framed bike with high end components is about $7000.
And this makes them smile. And, as an added bonus, bicyclists are less tense than the people belted into their metal, four-wheeled boxes.
On the contrary. If you’re riding at any kind of rate above 10 mph (barely not falling) you’re going to be elevating your heart rate. Add the thrills of riding in traffic bicyclists have got to have elevated adrenalin levels compared to drivers, so my guess is that your average cyclist is more tense on the bike, at least in cities, than drivers.
Sure, out on a country road, when the endorphins are flowing and you’re spinning in the zone, it’s very meditative, and certainly the exercise is good to reduce stress off the bike, but speaking as a bikie, the stress is non-trivial.
The statistical truth is that 90% of trips made in cars are less than five miles from our homes. A very comfortable journey made on a bicycle.
Define comfort. If you want to avoid chafing, you’re going to have to put on some bike shorts, and while any healthy person should be able to easily pedal five miles, you’ll probably need a shower when you get there. Five miles is enough to get your body warmed up pretty good so even if you aren’t sweating heavily on the bike, you will start sweating as soon as you get off.
The more people that ride bikes, the safer it gets to share the road with pedestrians and cars.
I’m not convinced. The most dangerous thing that a cyclist can do is cross an intersection with the light, because more cyclists are killed by drivers turning right than in any other situation. Two of my three car/bike accidents involved the driver turning right.
Perhaps if this was like Holland, where large fractions of people rode bikes drivers would be more aware.
Perhaps the best part of choosing a bike instead of a car is what you are saying by pedaling. You are saying to yourself, your friends, your family, and the cars that clog our roads and highways, that you care about the air we breathe and that you care about the environment.
Nah. I just like to ride bikes.
You are a person that wants to pose beside your new bicycle instead of a new car.
Actually, I’ve ridden my bicycle (not new, about 13 years old, about 35,000 miles) to car shows and I’m careful not to scratch the cars.
The Zen of bicycling is way cooler than the art of motorcycle maintenance.
I doubt you read the book, but if you did you missed the point. I’m Jewish, not a Buddhist, but I studied Buddhism in college, and it seems to me that Zen would find meaning and meaninglessness in both riding a bicycle and in motorcycle maintenance. Certainly those cultures that have embraced the way of the Buddha have not been shy about embracing cars as well.
When was the last time I was not pissed off and stressed out after just a few hours spent driving behind the wheel of a car?
Some folks actually like to drive. We’re sorry you don’t enjoy it. Most of us who like to drive also know how to avoid most of the traffic. For further details on the joys of driving, please contact my colleague, Mr. Jack Baruth.
Ronnie,
Even Holland still has a lot of problems with bicycles getting hit by cars and trucks.
I bet this Matthew MOdine character–forgive me, I’ve never heard of him before–is under 30. He sounds like a self righteous kid, like I sounded at that age, in fact. I’d bicycled across the country, and I longed for the day when cars would disappear.
Ronnie, I have to take issue with a couple of your points, however.
Hard for me to believe bike riding wouild cause as much emissions of CO2 as driving, especially when you factor out resting metabolic rate. On the other hand, those are genuine CO2 emissions due to the fact that modern industrial agriculture depends so heavily on fossil fuels, whereas I’m sure Mathew Modine is ignoring that fact. Also, the environmental impact of making bicycles has to be far lower than that of manufacturing cars.
And cycling is far cheaper than driving.
Finally, while cycling can be stressful under some circumstances, because you are exercising, you are working off the stress even while you are generating it.
I think you’re exaggerating the need for fixing things on a bicycle. I used to get about 3,000 miles out of a rear tire (riding 3600 miles a year), more out of a front. (I ride less than 1,000 a year now.) I rarely got flats during my cycling heydays–probably a couple of times a year. I greased the bearings about once a year, and every now and then I’d have to replace a brake or gear cable. I did grease the chain (with parafin wax to keep them from attracting dirt and grime), a half hour or so operation, about every 5-6 weeks. Well, maybe you weren’t exaggerating here, after all.
I agree with most of the rest of what you have to say. I’d add that people like Modine risk alienating the rest of society from environmentalism with their rigid dogma.
Martin Schwoerer : does he even do anything nowadays? sounds like a has-been to me
Not a has-been. His career is just stuck in traffic.
David Holzman : I bet this Matthew MOdine character–forgive me, I’ve never heard of him before–is under 30. He sounds like a self righteous kid
Modine is actually 50 years old. He just never grew up.
The same arguments can be made against going to the movies, attending any professional sporting event, attending the local production of “Our Town,” watching television, or even for that matter, driving to the store to pick up your brand new bicycle.
Where does one draw the line?
“Where does one draw the line?”
The environmentalists draw the line at no one on planet earth. They would prefer you not be here, do anything, or even die. All involve pollution of the earth.
I am not sure what the purpose of a totally un-inhabited earth is. It would certainly be pristine. But for whom? The universe? Would it even be pristine with no one to experience?
He’s entitled to his opinion. I am entitled to ignore it because he is ignorant.
I may be the only one, but any trip or ride in a car is still a pleasure, an entertainment and the act of driving still fun.
Biking makes me sweat and my ass hurt…. maybe that’s the real reason Mo-dine likes it.Or maybe it’s just really all about the bicycle shorts.
Another Hollywood slack jaw trying to assuage his guilt about hitting life’s jack pot in a business based on who you know, are related to, and how you look. Talent need not apply.
It feels like it was only yesterday that this pariah status was bestowed upon SUV’s and those who drove these frightening beasts carelessly down our highways while yapping away on cell phones and frightening bicyclists, Miata owners, children, and small pets.
But now that the $4 gasoline surge has driven the SUV off, it’s only natural that this pariah status gravitate towards regular passenger cars and those who drive these frightening beasts carelessly down our highways while yapping away on iPhones and frightening bicyclists, Prius owners, children, and small pets.
I guess the easy thing to do is fire off some self congratulatory snark over what a washed up Hollywood hack Modine is. But then you’d be making the same mistake SUV owners made when the backlash against their vehicles seemed small and insignificant(like the Mini Cooper they roared past on the highway).
Read through the comments. He’s obviously touched off a nerve judging by the amount of people who wholeheartedly agree with his analogy, and guess what? They’re probably not members of Critical Mass. It’s only a matter of time before the anti-car backlash hits the mainstream like the anti-SUV backlash. You’d be wise to counter this threat with something other than the usual smirks.
If he had ever rode mass transit, he would know why people would desire a car. American mass transit is awful: it takes too long to use, the routes are made to go solely through poor and industrial areas, and in the long run it doesn’t cost much less than a cheap used car. For the actual population and not just barely working millionaires with no time-related needs to be able to give up vehicles, mass transit has a long way to improve. In the past seven months, I have spent an entire day just WAITING for mass transit, not including the added time it takes over using a vehicle while moving (I have been without a car over this time period, so I have learned how painful mass transit use actually is). One cannot live in this country with just a bicycle.
Besides, even if the car was replaced by mass transit, it will never completely dissappear: due to how fun driving is, it will always keep at least a niche similar to that of motorcycles, where owners use them for joy-riding.
Excellent posts, everyone, especially Ronnie Schrieber.
It’s funny. I commute by bicycle about 50 miles a week and really enjoy it. Yet after reading Modine’s nit-witted opus, I wanted to go out and buy a Hummer H2, run the A/C with the windows open, blast some hip-hop, vote the straight GOP party line and annoy every panty-waist, self-righteous eco-weenie in Manhattan.
I won’t of course — some of them are my friends.
But still, half-wit twerps like Modine and Alec Baldwin (in last week’s HuffPost) really should stick to memorizing what other people write. Like Bugsy Siegel in Las Vegas, they get in trouble when they start thinking for themselves. — does more harm than good by turning off people who might listen to more intelligent essays for environmental responsibility.
P.S. Good news/Bad news – My wife says we’re going to a fundraiser next week for the solar-powered arts center near our apartment. Sounds fun. The bad news? Matthew Modine is hosting.
He really needs to get a job as he has too much time on his hands.
Hey Bomberpete,
Want to make that fundraiser even more fun? Give Matt a copy of the responses from TTAC. Just print them out, pop them in an envelope marked “Mr. Modine” and set them in a place where he can pick it up.
jkross22 :
May 28th, 2009 at 7:36 pm
Hey Bomberpete,
Want to make that fundraiser even more fun? Give Matt a copy of the responses from TTAC. Just print them out, pop them in an envelope marked “Mr. Modine” and set them in a place where he can pick it up.
I’ll probably be tarred and feathered as if I were Dick Cheney, but it might be worth it.
Mr. Modine states:
“The sexy lifestyle that the tobacco industry sold to us contains the same advertising lies and poison which the automobile industry sold and continues to sell to the world.”
Speaking of “advertising lies and poison,” who came up with this line: “The Course Has Been Set. There Is No Turning Back. Prepare Your Weapons. Summon Your Courage. Discover the Adventure of a Lifetime!”
Oh, yeah, that’s the advertising slogan for “Cutthroat Island,” which Mr. Modine was fortunate enough to co-star in. This is the same “Cutthroat Island” that, according to Guinness, still holds the world record for most money lost on a movie, and bankrupted the company that produced it.
Lesson for Mr. Modine? Only this: if people are “dumb” enough to buy cars, and smart enough to stay away from his piss-poor movies, the problem isn’t advertising – it’s shitty product.
Smug Alert!
The only celebrity environmentalist that I respect is Ed Bergley Jr. He walked the talk with his 1st gen early adapter photovoltaic system and electric cars.
The rest of the bunch are Johnny Come lately’s piling on the bandwagon.
It is a pity that just 99% of the Hollywood actors, celebrities, wannabees, and has beens give the rest a bad name…
what a douche bag! i love my mtb but i also have a 20 mile commute probably 45-75 min by bike. as for mass transit i don’t want to be sitting on metro link look over and see some homeless drunk twisting one off or deal with the crime or shootings at the station.hey if he wants to do that more power to him
Is this the same Matt Modine that was in that “sexy car movie” Transporter 2?
F-in’ hi-po-crate…
Why should average people carry the “Carbon Cross” for Hollywood stars and political pundits? They do realize that most of the ingredients in the meals they eat at their fancy restaurants are shipped in by diesel trucks? There is absolutely no diversity of thought in Hollywood.
Perhaps the best part of choosing a bike instead of a car is what you are saying by pedaling. You are saying to yourself, your friends, your family, and the cars that clog our roads and highways, that you care about the air we breathe and that you care about the environment.
Nah. I just like to ride bikes.
This reply made me laugh. Why oh why does everything have to have a political statement built into it these days? This guy just likes to ride bikes. Driving a foreign car isn’t a political statement, maybe a person just likes Toyotas or whatever. Get over it.
John
If you believe consumers are not victims of “assault and manipulation”, please step out of your tardis…
That picture with TTAC.COM printed below the car would make an effective logo, dress up a different car each month. New cinamon 911 in black lace, breathtaking.
@JK43123 (two above this post)
or to put it another way, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar!
I disagree with Quasimondo, above. I think the people responding favorably to Modine on huffpo are way on the fringe.
“Ask yourself, When was the last time I was NOT stuck in traffic?”
Better question:
When was the last time I was stuck in traffic? Seems like its been almost 2 years.