While mining Teh Internets for material on a post that I may never write (Working title: "The Hole in the Media where Tom Friedman Should Be") I ran across this:
Let Them Die?, Ctd. Megan weighs in:
GM can't be saved. It needs to go into bankruptcy, which is the only possible way I can see to adjust its legacy labor problems, and possibly provide sufficient shock to the corporate culture to allow the company to make a competent car. Even that may not work. And it's going to involve a whole bunch of pain for everyone. But unless we're willing to essentially nationalize three auto companies, that pain is going to come, sooner or later. And if we want to keep auto workers from feeling pain, then we should just up and give them money. There's no reason to waste steel on a lot of crappy cars.Man, I hope Pelosi doesn't get her way. Tom Friedman's column made a valiant effort to make the case for a bailout, but I don't see one. Haven't I given up enough of my income to incompetent capitalists?
Four years later, while live-blogging one of the 16,218 GOP debates, Mr. Sullivan did briefly own up to getting yet another Very Big Thing entirely and enthusiastically wrong --
8.40 pm. John King destroys Mitt Romney by citing Bush administration officials on the complete lack of private capital to buy up a bankrupt auto industry on the brink of a global depression. Then you see the candidates pivot to the UAW, where they are more comfortable. The truth is: I opposed the auto bailout but have been proven pretty obviously wrong. And attacking the bipartisan process - begun by Bush and contin ued by Obama - that saved Detroit seems to me to be not so great a political argument.-- but Christ in a Chrysler, at this point does it even matter?
Mr. Sullivan is one of several elite Conservatives who simply do not live in the real world where anything they say or do have any of the professional costs and consequences that come as standard equipment with virtually any other job.
Instead, they exist in some eternal Conservative college dorm room fantasy-land where you get to just sleep off your world-class fuckups and then amble down to the Buckley Hall cafeteria with your chums the next morning for a little Burke on toast with a side of Gippers.
And don't worry about the blood and vomit and broken pottery you leave in your wake, young gentlemen! At good old Conservative U., there is always some working stiff or soldier on tap to clean up your disasters, and there is always some wealthy alum in a faraway office to pick up your tab.
It's all part of the service.
6 comments:
There is a club...
Actually, Teddy N. Needs to do a cover of Oingo Boingo's "Little Girls," after what I read about Ted's taste for under-aged girls...very under-aged girls (Courtney Love?? At 12???)
I keep having this recurring fantasy, where I get to strap various pundits and politicians in to movie theater seats, and make them watch various film works "Clockwork Orange" style.
Today's feature wing nut re-education presentation would consist of a clip from Moore's "Roger and Me", where recently laid off G.M. employees have the privilege of posing as human statue drink dispensers at some sort of executive conference....so powerful and destructive was their union....30 years ago...
Right this way Mr. Sullivan, your front row seat awaits.
'Haven't I given up enough of my income to incompetent capitalists? '
and haven't we given enough of out time to incompetent columnists? (refers to sully, lest there be any doubt)
Haven't I given up enough of my income to incompetent capitalists?
andrew, haven;t we given up enough of our attention to incompetent columnists?
I suppose people like Sullivan and McArdle have their use, in a George Costanza sort of way: If you do the opposite of what they recommend, you should do really well.
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