Harris Teeter Preferential Parking for Hybrids

From a reader:

Today I was shopping at our Crozet (Blue Ridge) Virginia Harris Teeter and saw that there were special parking places given to those driving hybrid vehicles. You have got to be kidding.

Such political correctness and partisan politics is ridiculous. Driving a hybrid does nothing for planet earth and giving preferential treatment to those who do breaks the principle of justice, treating all people as equally important.

If you wanted to treat some as more important than others, driving a hybrid would not even be on my top 100 categories of people to honor.

How about the poor who can’t afford hybrids? How about the service men and women who make it possible for private citizens to own anything? How about the small business owners who employ most of the people who shop at Harris Teeter? How about those productive few making over $250,000 a year who pay most of the taxes?

You are breaking the principle of justice and equality and encouraging a false sense of pride and hypocrisy. Please change your evil practice and remove the signs for preferential parking based on what type of car people drive.

Tell them to drop the PC parking if they want any Republicans to shop there.

For what it’s worth, I might park there myself in my Honda Pilot. The sticker on the window says ULEV – Ultra Low Emissions Vehicle.

Update 22 November 2010: I had a feeling this post might generate some discussion, but really, I had no idea … I received a thoughtful email from a reader today questioning my posting this in light of the current tensions in our society (at least that’s how I read it) and this is my response:

Thanks for the email.

I debated posting this, but I think the debate is healthy.

Most importantly, we learned that it isn’t HT policy but a LEED one, and I think that is progress.

Also I think confronting the tension and defusing it with calm intelligent response is the best way to approach it, and I hope that that has been accomplished. In my ideal world, the writer will have learned something and move on.

What do you think?