Clearly the paper's owner, Rupert Murdoch, hates the shit out of bikes because the paper spared no expense in launching this latest offensive. First, they bought the ET costume from the Stephen Spielberg classic film, "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial." Then, they hired a mortuary cosmetic artist to make it up like Jackie Onassis. Finally, they engaged the Jim Henson Company to create the illusion of human movement and speech. Incredibly, in only a matter of days, this creative dream team managed to take the project from computer renderings:
To finished product:
Now that's movie magic.
But of course, even the best special effects are hollow and lifeless without a brilliant script to give them life, and so the Journal hired Bruce Vilanch to make hilarious phrases like these come out of her word hole:
--"I represent the majority of citizens."
Yeah, right. You don't even represent the majority of nonagenarians who sublimate their fear of death into obscene shopping sprees at Bergdorf.
--"We now look at a city whose best neighborhoods are absolutely, you know, begrimed, is the word, by these blazing blue Citi Bank bikes."
Over the past 50 years New York City has been "begrimed" by blackouts, near bankruptcy, the crack epidemic, terrorist attacks, and most recently a Giant Fucking Hurricane--all of which seem to have gone unnoticed by Mme. Rabinowitz, who must have been spending the past half-century shopping, not tipping her doorman, and subsisting on scoops of cottage cheese served in leaves of iceberg lettuce. For some reason though the bikes fill her with terror, because, you know, she's "sentient:"
--"Before this, every citizen knew, who was in any way sentient, that the most important danger in the city is not the yellow cabs, it's the cyclists who veer in and out of the sidewalk..."
I think she means "senile," not "sentient."
But where are the warnings?!?
--"If you get into a taxi now you'll see in your face you'll see signs saying 'Be very careful...if you open the door you could hit a bicyclist.' Where is the parallel warning to people saying, 'If you are a cyclist you are required to...the rules of the road are yours."
Hey, Dorothy, it's EXACTLY RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE FUCKING HANDLEBARS:
This is what happens when you've been dying your hair for 60 years and the chemicals start leaching into your brain.
By the way, a tip of the wig to the Jernel for finding an interviewer who's equally if not more stupid:
My favorite was when she said this, which could be the dumbest thing ever said by a newspaper person ever:
--"It's not just shocking, it's also a fire hazard in some cases because the fire trucks can't get into subway stations...because you've got Citi Bank racks."
Okay, so this a fire truck:
This is a subway station:
And this is a dumb idiot:
By the way, aficionados of complete and utter morons will fondly recall her as the same one who said cyclists shouldn't serve in the military:
Does the editorial staff of the Wall Street Journal not know that this stuff will be on the Internet forever? It's not like back when Dorothy Rabinowitz was only 70 and if you wanted to look at old newspapers you had to go through the trouble of visiting the library and fucking around with microfiche. No, this is a permanent and easily-accessible record of how completely out-of-touch and batshit insane your editorial staff was in 2013. I'd say that in a few years this paper is going to be a laughingstock, but the fact is that thanks to this video they're a laughingstock now. The only sense I can make of it is that the Jernel is fed up with competing with the New York Times and has instead decided to compete with The Onion:
Speaking of the New York Times, they deserve a lot of credit for posting this on the same day:
I wasn't even sure what he was talking about half the time but bike share makes him deliriously happy and I love it. Sure, I'd have preferred a video of him kicking Dorothy Rabinowitz square in the shin, but this will have to do.
In any case, to celebrate the bike-related inanity that News Corporation has been spewing forth from the Post and the Jernel, please save the date of this Friday, June 7th:
I'm thinking what I might do is just hang around the general vicinity News Corp. headquarters on the 6th Ave. and give away free books. (My books, unfortunately for you.) I'll keep you posted and let you know if I follow through, but if I do you should grab a Citi Bike and roll on by.
Keep in mind though that I reserve the right to scrap the whole thing and just do this instead, which is what I was doing this past weekend:
If I've done one right thing in my life it's moving to a neighborhood from which I can ride to decent trails, and if I've done two right things it's that and getting myself an Engin:
Every so often people will ask me what my favorite bike is and I'll kind of hedge, but over the weekend I had to admit to myself that it's this one. (Not counting my sentimental favorite which I no longer have anyway. Plus, this is its direct evolutionary descendent since both are one-geared bikes with knobby tires designed entirely for having fun.) Also, at no point during my ride did I engage in Strava doping, as forwarded to me by a reader:
But that's only because I don't use Strava. If I did you can be sure I'd use this. That's because Strava is essentially "foffing off" anyway, and it's technically impossible to cheat at masturbation. Saying you shouldn't enhance your Strava performance is like saying you shouldn't use pornography to enhance your onanism--or like you shouldn't use deviled eggs to attract a mate:
You complimented my deviled eggs - w4m - 33 (Grand Army Plaza)
You had long hair pulled up. You were riding a bike through the Grand Army Plaza intersection. I was holding a dish of deviled eggs and you said: Deviled eggs! Yum, yum, yum, yum, yum. You're cute and you appreciate deviled eggs, which I like. Contact me.
Maybe Dorothy Rabinowitz is right. Between the bikes and the deviled eggs, this city is going to hell in a Citi Bike basket.
