Streetfilms: Meet Veronica Moss, A.U.T.O. Lobbyist

Ever wonder what folks working for sustainable transportation at the
federal level are up against on K Street? For this Streetfilms
exclusive, we were granted unfettered access to Veronica Moss,
lobbyist for the Automobile Users Trade Organization (AUTO). Veronica gave
us a few precious moments inside her SUV to talk about roads, traffic,
cyclists, and big cities. While instructing us on proper honking
techniques for "old people" and children, she also offered up some choice bons mots. Here’s a sample:

  • "People need to be able to drive their cars — that’s an American right!"
  • "Bikers are a pimple on the butt of any city."

If you love Veronica, make sure to check out our mockumentary on The Search for the Zozo, where she also makes an appearance.

  • loncoln nav lvr

    that was hot! It was almost NSFW.

  • Larry Littlefield

    Do we really want to have more land use and infrastructure decisions made at the federal level, and deal with this? Let us have NY. She can have whatever part of the country agrees with her.

  • Lars

    Tremendous. We all know people like this. For reals.

  • Lee

    That’s some good satire!

  • Ed

    That was hot!
    Reminded me of Parker Posey in ‘Best in Show’.

  • Women are bad drivers lololololol.

  • dporpentine

    My favorite line is when she acknowledges that her car is also a weapon.

  • she is about as appealing as lizzie grubman.

  • Vill

    Bottom line is that the car will never go away, and there is nothing you Streetsbloggers can do about it. For the rest of your lives, you will live in a world where cars rule the streets. You may think because you have a rude sexist unfunny little video making fun of a female auto lobbyist that you’re funny and hip and cool and that you’re winning the battle against cars, but the truth is that there really isn’t even a battle to fight, since the cars and the SUVs have already won. No matter how much money your millionaire donor pumps into your blog, the fact remains that you will never be able to influence enough Americans to get out of their cars to make any significant difference. It’s kind of sad, actually, when you think about it.

  • face it, your influence is waning. you’re just jealous.

  • Lars

    Vill: obviously by your trolling comment you feel threatened. The truth is the car still dominates – yes – but every day in this city and many others it dominates just a little less and that makes us “streetsbloggers” happy. So bring on your Outrage, the fact is we are on the right side, and people on the right side never give up.

  • Marty Barfowitz

    Vill,

    Maybe the sound system in your Chevy Regurgitator is blasting too loud for you to notice anything happening in the wider world outside your five-ton vehicle and plush bucket seats but here are a few things that happened this week…

    – General Motors officially went bankrupt. The US no longer even has an auto industry.
    – Automobiles were banned from Times Square, the “Crossroads of the World.”
    – It was announced that bikes outsold cars last quarter.
    – The price of a barrel of oil snuck back up past $60.
    – Iran sent 6 warships into the international waters that we use as our nation’s oil supply route.

    It took seventy years to screw up this country with automobiles, sprawl and cheap oil. It’s going to take decades to fix it. But make no mistake: The change is underway. As Matthew Modine writes in today’s HuffPo: Cars are the new cigarettes.

  • hah

    “chevy regurgitator” – HA! good one!

  • Veronica Moss has the potential to be a real Colbert-style skewering of car lifestyle promotion rhetoric (like the whole “freedom” bullshit). But it’s not there yet. What disappointed me (and frankly made me avoid watching this video for a while, after seeing the excerpt in the Zozo video) is that it’s too blatant.

    Colbert’s strength (which is found in some of the best political satire, like Sacha Baron Cohen) is that he’s so close to what some conservatives are actually saying that most of the time you’re not sure whether to believe him or not – even if you know it’s an act. When he’s ridiculous, he’s ridiculous in the same ways that real conservatives are. Before everyone knew who he was, he fooled a lot of people for at least part of the time.

    In this video, Berthold would only fool the dumbest car promoter. If she works more on the subtlety, on being dead-on realistic right up to the punch line and beyond, she could develop this into a really powerful form of satire. Until then, it’s just a silly way for the in-group to blow off steam.

  • Great stuff.. too much fun

  • Tom Butler

    Cap’n Transit nailed it. I like what she’s trying to do, but she could be much funnier and more effective if she toned it down a bit.

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