Little Car Father

Update: Commenter Blogstrop riffs on Kipling:

If you can keep your
Cast Alloy Heads
Whilst all around you
Are losing theirs;
If you can take your
Mega-millions salary
And swap it for $1,
While filling every hour
With sixty minutes
Of innovative management,
You'll be a mensch,
Or perhaps
A menshevik, my son

There is now serious talk about having a "Car Czar" to oversee the proposed bailout of our Big Three automobile manufacturers. Paco World News has uncovered the draft of a letter written by GM's Chairman, G. Richard Wagoner, Jr., which is ready to be sent the day that a czar is anointed.


His Majesty
Czar of All the Car Makers
Washington, D.C.

Little Father:

Forgive my importunity, Majesty, but I appeal to you in the eleventh hour of our crisis, as we teeter precariously on the edge of bankruptcy.

We are harassed on all sides, by union Cossacks, blood-sucking bankers and rebellious stockholders. Only yesterday, a mob of workers threw tomatoes at my BMW limousine as my chauffer drove out of the garage at GM headquarters to take me to the airport. Fortunately, they could not get near the private jet; otherwise, I might have been late to an important meeting being held in Las Vegas to discuss alternative methods of raising new capital (incidentally, it is my sad duty to report that this venture failed; I was wrongfully accused of card-counting, and large men in tuxedos laid hold of my person and escorted me from the casino).

Other sources of investment having proved to be nonexistent, I implore your Majesty to “open the granaries”, as it were, and distribute a small portion of the national wealth to General Motors. A few billion dollars may be just enough of a rag to stanch the hemorrhage of cash that threatens to bleed our company to death. Think, sire, of the consequences to our loyal assembly-line workers, who may well have to sell their second homes in Ft. Lauderdale if we are overtaken by the disaster that descends upon us with the speed, efficiency and reliability of a Honda S2000. Look with the horror that I know you feel in your humane heart on the prospect of corporate nobles having to send their children – the foundation of our nation’s future! – to second-tier private schools. Consider the impact on many of our most venerable country clubs as the membership shrinks precipitately, and caddies turn in desperation to drug dealing and car theft.

Take pity on us, Little Father, and help us in this, the hour of our greatest peril. In return, I promise that GM will create a task force charged with the responsibility for formulating an agenda for the discussion of the establishment of working groups to explore the possibilities of implementing economies of scale and improving quality control (subject, as always, to approval by the UAW and the Executive Compensation Committee).

Yours faithfully,

G. Richard Wagoner, Jr.
Chairman and CEO
General Motors