R. Emmett Tyrrell and the persistent perseverance of wrongness

R. Emmett Tyrrell  is a magazine editor, book author and columnist and the founder and editor-in-chief of The American Spectator. He has also spent his career being wrong about cycling, a fact made all the more surprising by the fact that he was college roommates with Steve Tesich, the screenwriter of both "Breaking Away" and "American Flyers". Of course he even found room to quibble with the film that won his friend an Oscar.

Of course, Hollywood had to tart up the "Breaking Away" story to conform with its own legends and bugaboos. The struggle of the downtrodden townies against the lordly college students never took place.

Though the bicycle race did take place, Stoyan's townies were actually members of our circle of friends, an eccentric bicycle rider of immense talent named Dave Blaze (sic) and several national champion swimmers, one quite rich. In the movie the putative townies from hillbilly families listened to opera and wore Italian paraphernalia such as ascots. That was the style, of course, of off-beat college students, not poor country boys. Only Hollywood would believe in hillbillies singing arias an d insist that rich and privileged (actually quite middle-class) students lose races to wretches of Dickensian pathos.

Tyrrell's record of anti-cyclist writing starts shortly after Breaking Away hit theaters. In 1980, writing in the Washington Post (below or here) he wrote in support of Mayor Koch's decision to remove the bike lanes he had installed a year earlier. He claimed the caused  congestion, endangered pedestrians and frightened dogs (for reals). He argued that NYC workers would be happier driving to work than they would be biking. He called bikes unstable and dangerous.

"Not only are bicycles dangerous, they are as antiquated a form of transportation as the rickshaw. In no advanced city on earth will you find civilized people cycling to work. The urban cyclist is generally a crank, either profoundly antisocial or hopelessly narcissistic and following the strenuous life in hopes of achieving immortality or a legendary sex life."

The piece earned him no friend's in the bicycling community and three years later he took to the Post's pages again, this time to attack "militant cyclists" because a writer, who was also a cyclist, was criticizing him. ["Liberals and the art of bicycle fanaticism", Jun 13, 1983] Militant cyclists don't ride for recreation or out of economic need, he wrote, but for the "ulterior motive of making moral or political statements." You know, those guys. Anyway, he continued to claim bikes are "unstable" despite the disagreement of physics. And repeated much of his 1980 article word for word - including the line about how the brakes of a Model T are better than that of a bike (I don't know either) and that they endanger pedestrians and dogs. He then goes on to call for urban cycling to be banned or curtailed.  But he never really explains how cycling connects to liberals.  

In the same article he predicted Margaret Thatcher's election would be 

If you thought he'd changed his mind as the world of urban cycling changed, you'd be wrong. In 2007 he wrote, in a bit of climate change denialism

We know environmentalists often ride bicycles and I can see why bicycles suit them. The bicyclist is the exalte' of the road. The bicyclist is neither a pedestrian nor a driver. He cycles where he damn well wants to, on the sidewalk or on the street. He flashes by with his posterior in the air. Neither stop signs nor speed limits impede him -- and he is environmentally beneficent. Automobiles have to give him a wide berth and pedestrians leap aside as he pedals past. Environmentalists adore bicycles.

So the bicycle seems to be the ultimate green vehicle. Doubtless you will be seeing more of them, despite their limited capacity for bearing bossy bumper stickers. In the present presidential campaign, do not be surprised the Democratic candidates eventually conduct their campaigns from a bicycle. Bill and Hillary will probably be seen on a bicycle built for two -- Hillary on the front seat, Bill on the back where his eyes will be free to wander.

[As one of the key people in the Arkansas Project (the "Vast right-wing conspiracy" of yore) he is contractually obligated to mention the Clinton's in all articles] By then he'd lost control of the Spectator as the result of an investigation into the Arkansas Project and Tyrrell's mismangement. 

But wait, there's more. In 2014 he sided with anti-King Street bike lane activist Frank Buckley by calling cyclists names

However, the nation’s angry bicycle riders, I fear, are going to be with us for a while. In a few years, President Obama might be back in Chicago as former President Barack Obama, organizing illegal aliens or whatever, and the gloomy riders will still be out there arrogating to themselves their “bike lanes.”

Hillary Rodham Clinton will be securely in retirement, all her dreams of presidential grandeur vanquished, and still the militant bicyclists will be riding down the middle of Main Street presuming to slow down traffic to a modest 10 miles an hour and making inscrutable hand signals to drivers in every direction.

This time around, unlike the late 1970s, their anger is seemingly unappeasable, and they have local government on their side, especially in blue-state constituencies.

Studies show that cyclists are happier than other commuters. 

These are not cyclists in pursuit of scenery and good health. If they were, they would be riding along the 35 miles of bike trails that the community has maintained for them.

They are angry, obsessive utopians who would make their anti-people campaign — their anti-freedom campaign — the first battle in an attempt to take over the way normal Americans live. They are a social indicator of unhappy times that, God willing, are about to end.

He predicted the bike lanes would not be built. He was wrong. As he has been his whole career on cycling. 

Tyrrell is now a Trump fan (Because Trump shares Reagan's distrust of the Soviet Union?) and he wrote recently about London's congestion charge and anti-pollution efforts

The present mayor, Sadiq Khan, is of the left and he shares the left's lust for power. Everything he does indicates his hankering for power. To me, a foreigner in these parts, I sense this lust in his treatment of the automobile. The mayor envisages London as a city abundant with bicycle riders and pedestrians. In his London of the future, the only automobiles will be the patrol cars of the police.

Because nothing satisfies a lust for hunger like bicycle-friendly road design. 

It's not easy to steadfastly hold wrong ideas in the face of mounting facts. That kind of wrongness takes real backbone. 

Comments

[Contrarian]

"The urban cyclist is generally a crank, either profoundly antisocial or hopelessly narcissistic and following the strenuous life in hopes of achieving immortality or a legendary sex life."

I object to that characterization. I consider myself hopefully narcissistic. Other than that I'll own it.

[drumz]

For all the complaints about Sadik-Khan in London from what I can tell it was Boris Johnson who really got the ball rolling on big cycling changes in London. The bike share was called "Boris Bikes" after all.