by ReverseEngineer » Sun 07 Dec 2008, 22:49:56
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('mos6507', 'I')s that really a doomer rant? Clarkson lays on the sarcasm so thick you don't know what the hell he really thinks. Isn't his job to review cars? There is hardly a review here at all. He's not doing his job for sure. All I know is he's a global warming denier and a internal combustion lover so it's unlikely that he has or will ever accept the idea that "happy motoring" is dead man walking.
Spinning this rant as possible
sarcasm misses the point. Even if it IS sarcasm, it doesn't read that way to anyone except a person who considers Doomsday scenarios. Blank your mind of everything you ever read here, consider yourself a typical J6P reader of a column about Automobiles, and just how would you pick up on sarcasm in this rant?
Rather what I think in subtext is going on in this column is Clarkson is working through his own demons. He doesn't WANT to believe the automobile is "dead man walking", and so he is publishing the worst case scenarios told to him (or which he read lurking on PO) as a means to purge himself of contemplating such scenarios. "There, I wrote it, now I can Move On."
Regardless of the motivation BEHIND the column, how it reads to the unitiated is as a well researched analysis of concepts Clarkson gleaned from other "experts" in the field of finance. He doesn't name them of course, which either means he is pulling them out of thin air or what he is reading here on Peak Oil is bugging him so much he feels it necessary to write a response to that.
Reverse Engineer