The Morality Police

[Hal Copple]

My son and I were able to spend most of Sat together, doing car stuff, centered around getting snow tires (ice tires, actually, for SC) on his Boxster. Last week he spun gently off the interstate, causing a torn rear bumper cover. Could have been much worse.

He is on several Porsche forums, and we talked a lot about cars, and the people who populate the forums, like this one. Before i got my Replica, i was on a Mitsu forum, with my Turbo AWD car. It used to be that virtually all the discussion was about how to make our cars faster. In time, as the cars drifted down to a younger group of owners, there began to appear many posts about "kills", or when a fast Eclipse/Laser/Talon would beat some other car on the street. This would bring forth scathing denunciation of the street race, so these sorts of posts began to be less frequent, but i am sure the real incidents did not.

Chris says on the several popular Porsche forums, there are a few frequent posters who have taken upon themselves to jump on anybody who defiles the "image" of a Porsche driver. If a driver talkes about a spirited country drive, he will be scolded and chastized, and generally humiliated for disgracing the faultless public perception of how a Porsche must be driven. Chris calls them the Morality Police.

And so it happens here, on CC. A new member asked a reasonable question, here and elsewhere, and the first reply jumped his case for being stupid and lazy. If I were to contemplate purchasing any complex car, for sure i too would seek information and opinion, anywhere i could. It seems to me that we too have a small number of members who have assumed the right to keep things correct, right, and going in the proper direction.

Our own Morality Police, i call them. There is such poor tolerance (by a very few) of newness, of inquiry, of question, of disagreement, of naivete, or in general, of any non-approved action or opinion. As i have grown older, and hopefully matured, i have become more tolerant of most things, and think that those who claim the righteous position are mean and dangerous to the uniqueness of human nature. Me, I guess i am poorly tolerant of the Morality Police.