The rumors are true. Dan
Neil, the L.A. Times’ Pulitzer Prize
winning automobile columnist, has left to go to the Wall Street Journal. Talk about shocking. Dan is a notorious Left
Coaster, and him going to work for WSJ
publisher Rupert Murdoch is like James Carville signing on as a writer for Rush
Limbaugh.
Dan is probably my
favorite author. Where writers like Pat Conroy spray readers with a firehouse
full of metaphors, Dan’s word pictures are peregrine falcons, soaring, sharp-clawed,
and always lethal when they dive to strike some stumbling four-wheeled pigeon--are
your ears burning, General Motors? Actually, Dan’s review of the Pontiac G6 a few
years back (“An American Idle”) made the folks at the General so mad they
pulled their advertising from the Times.
Some of my favorite
Neilian metaphors include one from his visit to an upscale Hollywood store
(“Rodeo Drive leads Los Angeles in collagen per capita. There are more pouty
mouths there than at an orphanage at Christmas,”) and this description of a
recent Bentley, (“about as aero sleek and slippery as the mountain on its way
to visit Muhammad”).
Driving a high end BMW in
the former East Germany, Dan talked about cruising down
lumpenproletarianstrasse. I’m sure this little bit of mischievous typing briefly
got Karl Marx more hits than a bong at a medical marijuana store.
Dan isn’t all bore and
stroke. He’s also a notorious biodegradable-card-carrying greenie. For example,
he did a review of an electric composter, which he described as more than a
little noisy--sounding “like a Lincoln Town Car had fallen into the disposal.”
And Dan is pretty critical of fuel swilling cars, referring to the
aforementioned Bentley’s turbocharged engine as “a woeful and desolate killing
field of hydrocarbons, the wailing wall of dead dinosaurs.”
I was curious about the
story behind the story so hacked into the WSJ’s voicemail server (a piece of
cake—system username “supplyside,” password “taxcut”) and downloaded messages
from Dan’s first day on the job. I’ve transcribed a few:
“Dan? Hey, Sarah Palin
here! We met yesterday at the Ferrari dealer? By the way, red is definitely
your color [wink, wink]. Anyway, I hear you write good and asked the guy who
reads newspapers to me to look you up. Well, he found something about a dude
named Mohammed doing things with mountains. Dan, I asked my foreign policy guy
about this while he was doing my hair and he says this Mohammed probably isn’t
a Real American if you know what I mean and maybe even a foreigner so probably
a terrorist. So Dan, you know the printer or whatever of your paper, you know, Rupee
Morlock or whatever? Well, he’s a Real American and won’t like that stuff. So,
my advice….hang on while I get this other call…”
“Dan! Roger Ailes! You
know, CEO of Fox! Just got your number from Sarah Palin. You’re going on the
Hannity show next week. We’re doing something fair and balanced on how
socializing the auto industry led to the Toyota recalls. One of your talking
points will be ‘Are Runaway Obamamobilies the New Death Panels?’ Great, huh?
You don’t need to remember this, it’ll all be on the teleprompter. So…hang on,
that damn cell phone…”
“Dan. Glenn Beck. Got
your number from Roger Ailes. Need you to do my program tomorrow. Here’s the
theme--remember that old Broadway Show, ‘The Solid Gold Cadillac’? We’ll
wouldn’t it be cool to bring that idea back? The whole car wouldn’t have to be
gold, maybe just the transmission or something else big. Maybe say it would
improve handling—isn’t gold light? Anyway. Hold on while I get this call…”
“Dan, this is your
editor. We’ve decided the title of your next feature story should be “Driving
Mr. Rupert.” The idea is you’ll review Mr. Murdoch’s car collection…”
So, I e-mailed some
questions to Dan. Does weaving through Fifth Avenue traffic count as canyon carving?
Can you finally afford that Ferrari F430? Is global warming really a hoax?
Unfortunately, I didn’t
get any answers. But I still hope. Come on, say it ain’t so, Dan.
Wait…isn’t that Dan over
there? The guy in the turbo Bentley? The one towing a Ferrari and cutting off a
Prius?
Sigh. Et tu, Dan?
Garrison Walters is author of the recently published thriller, Killing Justice.
