Bono on a P theme? or observation? Cars as sex objects. OpEd today's NYT

[malignd at aol.com]

Jeff Koons???


the genius of Marc Newson ... Steve Jobs and Jonny Ive from Apple ... 
Frank Gehry, the architect, and Jeff Koons, the artist.


-----Original Message-----
From: Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>
To: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Mon, Jan 4, 2010 12:16 pm
Subject: Bono on a P theme? or observation? Cars as sex objects. OpEd 
today's NYT


How is it that the country that made us all fall in love with the 
automobile has failed, with only a few exceptions, to produce a single 
family sedan with the style and humor and grace of the cars produced in 
the ’40s, ’50s and ’60s? Put aside the question of whether those models 
were male (as in longer, lower and wider, Dr. Freud) or female (as in 
fender skirts, curvy belt lines and, of course, headlights). Either 
way, they all had sex appeal. (In Ireland in the ’70s, it was the 
E-Type Jag that made sense of puberty.) Today, however, we have the 
mundanity of our marriage to the minivan and the S.U.V. and long-term 
relationships with midsize cars that are, forgive me, a little heavy in 
the rear cargo hold.Are aerodynamics to blame? Economics? Or that most 
American of inventions, design by committee? It hurts me to say this 
about democracy (and I know because my band is one), but rarely does 
majority rule produce something of beauty. That’s why the Obama 
administration — while it still holds the keys to the big automakers — 
ought to put some style fascists into the mix: the genius of Marc 
Newson ... Steve Jobs and Jonny Ive from Apple ... Frank Gehry, the 
architect, and Jeff Koons, the artist. Put the great industrial 
designers in the front seat, right along with sound financial 
stewardship ... the greener, the cleaner, the meaner on fossil fuels, 
the sexier for me. Check out the Tesla or the Fisker Karma car, 
designed by the same team that gave the world the Aston Martin.