The Charlotte Observer (11-18-02)
GOT SUV? COULD YOU GIVE IT UP?
DON HUDSON, Staff Writer

Last month, Republican activist turned political pundit Arianna Huffington pitched the idea that instead of the drug commercials the Bush administration has made shaming suburban teens for supporting evil warlords and drug cartels, it should turn its attention to a greater evil:

Soccer moms in SUVs.

Huffington says one of her Hollywood friends, Scott Burns of the "Got Milk?" ads, has a script ready showing different people driving to work in SUVs, saying these words:

"I gassed 40,000 Kurds."

"I helped hijack an airplane." "I helped blow up a nightclub." Then, in unison:

"We did it all by driving to work in our SUVs."

It's telling that in this rush of patriotism, where we are waving flags and ready to bomb Iraq, the one thing we aren't willing to do is change cars.

We love our SUVs.

I had a Pathfinder once. But I was one of the few who really needed four-wheel drive. I lived in Boise, Idaho, near the edge of civilization. I feared Albertson's supermarket would run out of food, and I would have to drive across the Rockies to slay a bison for dinner.

Never happened. But I was a macho dude, prepared for peril. Driving a fashion statement.

The preferred lifestyle in Charlotte is that of the Presbyterian princess, the upscale soccer mom, scurrying little Hunter and Madison from Charlotte Latin to dance lessons and Tai Chi in the back seat of the Sequoia or Denali.

It's not just parents.

I was an adviser at a Charlotte Country Day School environmental function. We were brainstorming for ways that kids could become environmentally conscious. Someone suggested they might drive something besides SUVs.

That idea drew a knowing laugh from the club's student leader. Imagine that: Kids having to do without their SUVs.

It's gotten so bad that instead of understating their net worth, otherwise enviro-conscious latte liberals will fudge their gas mileage figures to remain socially acceptable.

I used to have a subcompact BMW. The EPA says it gets 27 mpg on the highway. Same as my current two-seater. My friend's SUV? Only 19 mpg. Yet she argued her land yacht gets the same mileage as my car.

Morning radio diva Sheri Lynch said she gave up her Land Rover for a 1995 Mercedes station wagon. But she fully understands the SUV's pull to soccer moms: "It says, 'I may be a mom and living in the suburbs, but I am still cool.' "

A minivan driving mom going through a divorce told me none of the cute guys driving up Providence Road check her out in her Honda Odyssey. In her heart of hearts, newly single, she'd rather drive a Tahoe.

So, Arianna.

If Europeans want to drive Fiats and Mini Coopers, fine. If they want to charge $5 a liter for gas, fine. If they want to have a toll system of freeways, fine. That isn't America.

We subsidize big oil, big autos and big sprawl.

If it means we compromise our politics in the Middle East and support totalitarian regimes, so be it. Image is everything. We want our sexy SUVs. With cool names like Yukon and Denali, so that Hunter doesn't arrive at Tai Chi class in a Honda Accord.