America's Love Affair With Cars
The War on Cars
The War on Cars, LLC
4.9 • 937 Ratings
🗓️ 14 October 2020
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
It's often said that Americans have a "love affair" with cars and driving. Where did this oddly specific expression come from? Most people probably assume it was something that developed organically, like so many common sayings. But Peter Norton, the author of Fighting Traffic: The Dawn of the Motor Age in the American City, credits a little-known 1961 NBC TV documentary starring Groucho Marx for popularizing this famous phrase. It's a fascinating story that finds the wisecracking comedian pitted against anti-automobile activists such as Jane Jacobs and proves that America's so-called "love affair" with cars is more like an arranged marriage.
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SHOW NOTES:
Purchase Peter Norton's book Fighting Traffic: The Dawn of the Motor Age in the American City as well as titles by all the authors who've appeared on the podcast at the official War on Cars page on Bookshop.org.
Watch NBC's Merrily We Roll Along, which originally aired on NBC on October 21st, 1961 (Part 1 & Part 2).
Read "The Myth of the American Love Affair With Cars" (The Washington Post)
Find us on Twitter: @TheWarOnCars, Aaron Naparstek @Naparstek, Doug Gordon @BrooklynSpoke, Sarah Goodyear @buttermilk1.
Questions, comments or suggestions? Email us: thewaroncars@gmail.com
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | It's October 31st, 2016, and Jay Leno is a guest on the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, |
| 0:07.0 | the NBC Late Night Program he used to host. |
| 0:10.5 | He's there to promote a new season of his show, Jay Leno's Garage. |
| 0:14.0 | Jay Leno's Garage is coming back November 9th. |
| 0:17.0 | Right, right. |
| 0:18.0 | That's a fantastic show. |
| 0:19.0 | If you haven't seen it, you're going to love it. |
| 0:22.0 | It's well done. Yeah, if you have a laser display you might not enjoy |
| 0:24.0 | it as much but it's a it's it's sort of car oriented and we do have some celebrities |
| 0:30.0 | but we don't talk about their cocaine bust, the bad movie. |
| 0:33.0 | It's just the cars or their motorcycle. |
| 0:34.9 | Whatever. |
| 0:35.9 | Like a lot of talk show guests, Jay has a clip. |
| 0:38.8 | And this one is from an episode featuring Vice President Joe Biden. |
| 0:42.1 | But you just had Joe Biden on, which I loved, |
| 0:45.0 | because it's a very interesting, the ending is a, |
| 0:48.0 | well, we'll just set it up. |
| 0:49.0 | But he has this, is it Corvette? |
| 0:50.0 | No, what it was, yeah, he got a Corvette for a wedding gift, and he's had it since 1967. |
| 0:56.7 | The show is about People's Love Affair with a car, a car they had their whole life, you know, they married in it. |
| 1:03.2 | The show is about people's love affair with a car. |
| 1:06.7 | That's what Jay says. |
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