The diminutive elf causes mischief, misdirecting with its magic. It can be heroic, as Legolas in "The Lord of the Rings," and is often misunderstood, like Hermey the dentist, pal of Rudolph.

When a California Hummer dealership and some of its patrons found their trucks slightly molten as if by hail of anger in 2003, a news anchor(woman) led the story with the blurb "Domestic terrorism in the Southland!" Since the event had happened some time at night and only cameras witnessed the aggression, the report stood out as egregious hyperbole. Molotov cocktails differ from rolls of toilet paper, indeed, but not a single person suffered loss of life or limb.

Eventually, as expected, ELF was also, aptly, blamed. An acronym formed not out of irony, ELF finds itself on watchlists and in GOP spam equated with Osama, the Saudi, et al.

Should our lexicon co-opt "terrorism" (an attempt to elicit change by use of fear and the application of indiscriminate harm) to describe the boneheaded acts of petty vandals with a message? Of course the men and women who commit crimes in the name of their cause deserve contempt and maybe even airplay as shoddy anarchist amateurs wo go about things the wrong way. But as our society begins to equate Muslims with terrorism, as it does, it could also begin to equate environmentalism with the same misapplied word. And, as if to underscore the absence of logic that permeates our current ill-mannered war on terror, the damage done to the climate by voracious Hummers and their offroad cousins is labeled not as an act of stupidity or ignorance, greed or selfishness (or of terrorism), but of red-blooded American choice--of citizens celebrating freedom and their basic right to buy.