WATCH: Pulitzer Prize winner rants against 'all-powerful' bike lobby

Dorothy Rabinowitz, a Pulitzer Prize-winning member of The Wall Street Journal's editorial board, is no fan of New York City's new bike-share program. In a performance worthy of The Onion's Joad Cressbeckler, she railed against the "blazing blue" Citi Bikes, which she said had "absolutely begrimed" the city.

"Do not ask me to enter the minds of the totalitarians running the government of this city," she said, when asked to theorize why Mayor Michael Bloomberg instituted the bike-share program. "The bike lobby is an all-powerful enterprise."

Claiming to represent "the majority of citizens" in New York City, she then said the bicycles were more dangerous than taxi cabs: "Before this, every citizen knew, who was in any way sentient, that the most important danger in the city is not the yellow cabs. It is the bicyclists."

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

While the merits of bike-share programs can certainly be debated, it was Rabinowitz's cantankerous tone that seemed to amuse Twitter:

So what's behind this intense hatred of bicyclists?

It's not necessarily the bikes themselves, writes The Washington Post's Erik Wemple, but competition for the road in crowded cities: "Wherever space is at a premium in the United States, there is a swinging, brawling and never-ending debate over the relative villainy of pedestrians, cyclists and motorists."

The New York Times' Paul Krugman sees it as conservatives trying to paint liberals as effete Europhiles:

He then equates conservatives' bike-hate to their general distaste for public transportation by quoting George Will, who once said that liberals pushed for trains with the "goal of diminishing Americans’ individualism in order to make them more amenable to collectivism."

Citi Bikes: Convenient way to travel or socialist plot to destroy America? New York City residents and tourists will have to decide for themselves.