I can’t expect their agenda — I could say our agenda if I didn’t feel like dissociating myself from such cluelessness — to gain a lot of traction when there is such uncivil disobedience.
I couldn’t help thinking of Orwell’s Animal Farm — Some Animals are More Equal Than Others — when I saw that.
And it turns out we have had a local case of an impaired cyclist involved in the death of a local pedestrian[*]. So what happens to the idea of equality of cyclists and motorists? Granted, cyclists are allowed to ride on the sidewalk, as in this case, but drunk driving, no matter where it takes place, is unacceptable.
The whole thing stinks. Critical Mass, if these people are representative of it, is crap. From what I can learn from this article, it’s just a bunch of anti-social misfits claiming rights when they really mean entitlements. Rather than demonstrating maturity and building mutual respect, they think society will accommodate them if they complain loudly enough and act out, in hopes the rest of us will give in to keep the peace.
On the other hand, if I see an outpouring of letters and condemning these yahoos as not being representative of the two-wheels-good crowd, that will help straighten things out.
For the record, I think the people pictured and quoted are the minority, and the bone-headed end of the curve; they should not be poster children for the cycling public.
Update: since too much of this debate seems to come down a discussion about photo cropping/editing, I scanned the cover image from the magazine to better capture the product placement aspect that I found more irritating. This is just a thumbnail: the larger image might be more informative.
