The New York Times systematically dismantles this inane screed against new bike lanes in NYC to create the ultimate blueprint for car-driving freedom fighters to use as they battle powerful bike lobbies around the country. The article reads like Mad Libs, using the best-worst rhetorical tactics to argue why bike lanes will lead to the collapse of literally any healthy American city.

It's as if the NYTimes was personally handing Joni Balter or Joel Connelly a blueprint for their next "War on Cars" editorial. Here is how they'll begin:

Pre-emptive self-exoneration: “I don’t have anything against bikes.”

Invocation of humorlessness of cycling advocates, preferably with ironic comparison to homicidal political faction: “the bicycle lobby … pursues its agenda with about as much modesty and humor as the Jacobins pursued theirs.”

Reference to ominous encroachment of cycling-based anti-Americanism: “City Hall … sometimes seems intent on turning New York into Amsterdam, or perhaps Beijing.” (You know, Beijing: where the communists live!)

Invocation of personal cycling bona fides: “As a student, I lived in the middle of Oxford, where cycling is the predominant mode of transport, and I cycled everywhere.”

Fond nostalgia for pre-lane [INSERT CITY HERE] cycling perils, coupled with implied dismissal of today’s namby-pamby cyclists: “In those days … part of the thrill was avoiding cabs and other vehicles. … When I got back to my apartment on East 12th Street, I was sometimes shaking.”

Go read the whole thing here.

Hat tip, Aaron. I will never curtsy before you.