I also try to make imaginative leaps, and always bear in mind that local news tends to be sensationalized. If they re just forming households and having kids, they re hard-wired by nature to be at their most paranoid, because having children brings out paranoia in people. That Could Kill, tonight at 11. Car alarms, basically on the grounds of utility. Leaf blowers are a stupid way to do something, but they still do something.
Car alarms don t rouse citizens to protective action.
Selfishness and vanity win. This is a generation that wants to deny that it s aging, so the idea of buying a station wagon to drive its kids around is anathema. The fantasy is that you re four-wheeling it up the dirt road, but you re actually taking the kid to private school. That, I think, is the essence of it they appeal to the vanity of people. I should add, by the way, that I think Bill has been unfairly pilloried for his personal problems, and that we expect a lot of political figures.