The Critics Respond, Part Thirty-Four

What would you call somebody who turns down a challenge to a race then tries to snitch on you to your employer? You'd call that person a coward, if not worse.

Yamaha's Bruce Steever is a coward, if not worse.

And he has wayyyyy too many skeletons in his closet to be a snitch.

Let's take a look.

A few years ago, I wrote a quick column about "darksiding", which is the practice of putting car tires on the back wheel of touring motorcycles. Darksiding is a very controversial topic in the motorcycling community, but nearly everybody who has tried it is sticking with it.

My column neither endorses nor attacks darksiding. Instead, I discuss the fact that the much larger market and faster product-iteration cycles associated with the auto-tire business as compared to the motorcycle-tire business is permitting auto tires to advance at a faster rate. Nowhere in the article do I tell people to put a car tire on their Goldwings.

But my value-neutral stance on the issue didn't sit well with self-styled motorcycling-industry Bruce Steever. He and Wes Siler decided to "school" me on my Facebook page. The idea of me taking any "schooling" from these two borders on the vomit-inducingly hilarious. Both of them are casual riders at best, with no competition experience whatsoever. Wes is primarily known for crashing a motorcycle and posing with a dog; Steever is primarily known for, uh, a couple of fawning interviews in Motorcycle Consumer News.

So I told them to fuck off, and then I challenged them to meet me for a 250cc road race in 2015. Neither of them accepted, because they're not the kind of people who do well in actual competition. Racing has a way of humbling loud-mouthed dipshit wannabes. So I went racing without them --- and got a broken tibial plateau for my trouble. That's okay. I'd rather my son see me limping around for the rest of my life than have to tell him that I was too afraid to compete.

Steever's way of coping with this humiliation was uniquely bitch-made; he complained to Facebook that I wasn't using my "real name" on Facebook, which led FB to close my account. Good riddance. I can't say I was even that angry with him about it; he did me a favor of sorts. Gave me back a few hours a week to ride motorcycles.

Yesterday, Steever got on Jalopnik and started passive-aggressively begging Patrick George for a job. Which is odd, because Steever already has a job as the guy who washes out jockstraps for real racers at Yamaha. He's always talking about Yamaha --- that is, when he's not libeling the competition and insulting their customers. So I called him on being a snitch, at which point he revealed that he'd contacted R&T and tried to get them to can me!

I assume that everybody reading this blog knows the difference between being a man and being a snitch. A man responds to aggression with courage. A snitch responds to humiliation with sneaky behavior. Bruce Steever should be ashamed of himself. Yamaha should be ashamed to have him working there. But there's no way I'd call Yamaha and try to get him fired. That would be pathetic.

The funny part is that if Yamaha had any idea what Steever writes in public, while representing himself as a Yamaha employee who speaks for Yamaha, I think they'd go crazy. Examples:

YAMAHA EMPLOYEE CALLS FEMALE MOTORCYCLIST A "CUNT", THEN GOES ON TO TALK ABOUT YAMAHA IN OTHER POSTS THAT DAY

YAMAHA EMPLOYEE IMPLIES THAT YAMAHA CUSTOMERS, WHEN THEY DO WHAT IS SHOWN IN YAMAHA PROMOTIONAL MATERIAL, ARE EUGENICALLY INFERIOR CREATURES WHO SHOULDN'T BREED

There are dozens of comments on Jalopnik like that, where Steever alternately insults motorcyclists then lectures them about Yamaha products. Keep in mind that Bruce Steever works in Yamaha marketing. A while ago, I got into a disagreement with Ed Loh while I worked at Honda, but I was in production. I've never represented myself as a marketing or PR mouthpiece for Honda. I didn't speak for Honda when I worked there and I don't speak for them now.

Steever, on the other hand, represents himself as a Yamaha employee who speaks for the company --- and then he calls female bikers "cunts". Not a good look for Yamaha, if you ask me.

Luckily for Bruce, Yamaha has only a vague idea that I'm alive and they certainly don't read this blog. Nor would I ever snitch him out. But I will say this: I'd had some plans to buy the new FZ-10. As long as Steever is involved with the company, I'm not going to buy one. I'll get something else. I don't feel like funding his online behavior. That's the only proper and ethical way to respond to somebody like Bruce Steever, and that's all I'm going to do. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go ride my motorcycle.

Less talk, more riding.

Bruce Steever should look into doing the same.