Stupidity, on a "Lawn" scale

There was a feature article in the Wall Street Journal on June 5th titled "The Vegetable Patch Takes Root." Its main point was that home-owners are increasingly reducing their lawns and growing vegetables in those spaces.

The article does not question why lawns are so revered in the United States. Growing and maintaining a lawn is one of the stupidest things a person can do, for the following reasons:

1. One has to pay for the grass seeds or sod.
2. Lawns have to be watered regularly. Misuse of a scarce resource, and $$$ out of the pocket.
3. Lawns have to be mowed regularly. Most home-owners use gas powered lawnmowers, which have inefficient engines. $$$ out of the pocket for the lawnmower.
4. Lawns have to be mowed regularly. Misuse of a scarce resource, and $$$ out of the pocket for the gas or electricity for the lawnmower. Apparently, more people are now switching to manual mowers - see High gasoline prices changing lawn-mowing habits.
5. Polluting the environment with the gas lawnmowers as there are no emissions control equipment installed on the lawnmowers.
   
6. Opportunity cost of the time spent in mowing and watering the lawn.
7. People with lawns apply fertilizer. $$$ out of the pocket.
8. Chemicals leeching into the water supply, ultimately.
9. Some folks use chemicals to kill weeds in their lawns. See 7 and 8.
10. The valuable space can be used to grow food, or to grow plants that are much less stressful to the environment.

These points should be fairly obvious to anything or anyone with a brain. Why then is the fatal attraction to lawns so common?