-by Sailor Mur

I am a bleeding heart liberal. Save those trees, feed those poor, uplift those unemployed, maintain that power of choice, let those gays marry, bolster that first amendment, write those representatives and raise a healthy middle finger to Dubya. I give money to Planned Parenthood, Moveon.org, the ACLU, and my own favorite, the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. My yearly donations to the CBLDF always makes my accountant smile.

I even bought Eminem's "Mosh" on iTunes — Eminem, the misogynistic feeb who I have disliked since the beginning. I bought Mosh because it is an angry liberal anthem.

And yet I have a problem. You see, I own an SUV.

After two years of loading my daughter in and out of my 1996 Volkswagon Jetta, my back began having some serious issues. When the A/C went out in the Jetta last summer, I switched cars with my husband so our daughter wouldn't bake in the heat of a typical Southern summer. And no, I don't leave her in the car, but it's still miserable without A/C. Getting her in and out of the car seat in his Subaru Outback Sport was even worse. When the Jetta died a very sad death, in the middle of stop-and-go traffic one September afternoon, we went car shopping.

It was soon very clear that I couldn't buy the Mini Cooper I'd been lusting after. Mommies of toddlers don't drive Minis. It's not that we're not cool, 'cause we are one of the coolest groups around, but car seats and the Mini's almost non-existent back seat do not mix. Not to mention the lack of trunk didn't allow for strollers or massive boxes of diapers.

So we looked at the Toyota RAV 4. Small SUV. Compact. High enough off the ground for me to easily load the kiddo in and out of the car. enough cargo room for trips to the warehouse store. A roof rack, even. I took it for a test drive and fell in love. We worked out a loan that worked for us, and signed those papers without ever looking back at the sad little Jetta.

But as the days wore on and the new car feeling left, I had in the back of my mind every story I've heard from a liberal – including myself – about an SUV. The story will usually feature a clueless driver in a vehicle the size of Montana, yammering on a cell phone, breaking traffic laws, vehicular-manslaughtering people in smaller cars, or simply blocking the view when you want to turn right and they're on your left. And the word "SUV" is always said with a touch of venom, if not outright malice.

Everyone knows that SUV drivers have no regard for the environment. Everyone knows that they are using up the natural resources. Everyone knows that they are the cause of the war in Iraq because we need that precious oil.

If I saw a political sticker on an SUV last fall, nine times out of ten it wasn't for Kerry. Sterotypically, the conservatives do like their large SUV's. Funny title, that. Conservative. But I digress.

And here I was, buying one. I slapped the liberal bumper stickers on it while the ink was still wet on all the documents. I wanted to let everyone know that even though I was killing the environment, I cared. I was wracked with guilt while driving around in my comfortable SUV that saved me considerable back pain. I protested the wars while marveling at my CD/tape/radio combo that came standard with the SUV. I can listen to podcasts, my CDs of the Buffy soundtrack, and NPR without effort!

Then, last Christmas, Consumer Reports sent me a Christmas card for being a good contributor. Inside the card was a little toy: a mileage calculator. You slide a bar to indicate how many miles are on your car when you fill it up, and then find where that corresponds to how many gallons you used to fill up. Bingo, there's your miles per gallon. I played with this one dark night in December.

(Is "dark night" redundant? I was trying to build a mood. How about "cold night"? Cold night, there we go.)

So it was a cold night in December when I discovered the miles per gallon my Toyota RAV 4 got. The evil, gas-guzzling SUV. The foul, earth-destroying, polluting reason our boys and girls are dying in Iraq. I was ready for the liberal guilt to crash down on my shoulders, leaving me weeping and limping back to Carmax to trade my beloved SUV in for a Honda Civic, back pain and comfort be damned.

It said thirty-two miles per gallon.

I checked it again. That's not right, I thought. No way.

Thirty-two.

Since then, I check every fill-up. It's always between 28 and 32.

The only explanation is that the Liberal Fairy has blessed me, turning my massive Cinderella chariot into a tiny, economical pumpkin. My SUV has the heart of a Civic, with aspirations to be a Prius.

I got a visit from the magical Liberal Fairy, and I promise not to squander this gift. I try to let people turning right know when it's clear. I continue to wish for our troops' speedy and safe return home while giving money to the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. And I smile every time I fill up the car.

This doesn't mean, however, that I'm not buying a Mini when my daughter is out of her car seat. According the new law in North Carolina, that gives me six more years of living in outward liberal guilt, but inward liberal satisfaction that it is likely that my car might very well me more green than your itty bitty sedan.

But, one thing, Liberal Fairy. Why couldn't you have blessed John Kerry instead?