Another interesting take on what the collapse of the Big 3 Automakers is going to mean to everyone in Michigan, and the nation.
From Mlive.com
Want a gripping reality show? Check out Michigan
Posted by Jo Mathis | The Ann Arbor News December 12, 2008 22:08PM
The news Friday that the $14 billion bailout for the Big Three died in the Senate left me, like most Michiganders, numb.
After tossing $700 billion – just like that – at the fancy folks and criminals on Wall Street, the shortsighted, anti-union, stubborn fat cats in Washington had the nerve to balk at a $14 billion loan to automakers?
Really?
The struggle for survival of the Big Three automakers reminds me of grounding teenagers for a series of grievances. Mistakes were made. You know they need to suffer the consequences. But if you ground them, everybody in the house suffers, too. So because they’re showing promise and progress and a whole lot of people will benefit from their success, of course you send them a lifeline.
So now what? We wait for the Bush administration to take a chunk of Wall Street’s $700 billion and send it our way. And we keep on keeping on.
Back in January, The News printed a letter to the editor from a Whitmore Lake woman who wrote:
Six months ago my life was great, but it was all taken away in an instant when I lost my job last August. By October, I was moving out of the house I was trying to buy on land contract and since November I have been living in my aunt’s basement with my husband and two children.
I remember sitting at work reading about all these “people” who lost their jobs and feeling sorry for them. Now I am one of those “people.” …
I saved a copy of that letter because it was a reminder to not get smug or complacent about anything, including my job. And that was months before the stock market meltdown, when fears of Big Three bankruptcies were real but still remote and before the latest rounds of massive layoffs.
We journalists are experiencing many of the same problems we’ve written about for years: Buyouts. Layoffs. Cutbacks. Downturns.
My friend Sarah just lost her reporting job during a round of layoffs at The Cleveland Plain Dealer, and is staying with me for a few days to get her mind off things.
She’s 38 and talented and has no spouse she can depend on financially until she finds something else. She’s also stuck with a house in a city with a dearth of both jobs and home buyers.
“I’m worried that my life is going to become the same as a nursing home patient: Wake up. Eat. Watch TV. Go to bed,” she said, smiling on the outside, desperate on the inside.
We admit we’ve both had fleeting moments when we wished we were senior citizens comfortably retired and living peacefully on a pension.
Even Sarah’s mother is counting the days until she’s 65 and eligible for Medicare.
When did old age become the holy grail?
It’s further proof that everything’s spinning out of control and the world has gone mad.
And this is why I’m proposing that Hollywood dump its reality shows based in Atlanta and Beverly Hills and on deserted islands and move crews into the state of Michigan right away. Tomorrow.
They want drama and angst? We got ‘em en masse.
Wouldn’t you like to see an insider look at Borders? How about a reality show about Hillary Swank making a movie here? The Zingerman’s staff is a funky, friendly, colorful bunch. I sniff a reality show with the word pastrami in it.
What the heck. The Ann Arbor News newsroom has its share of characters and might make interesting reality show fodder right about now, too. You think I won’t act out a scripted fight with a copy editor or photographer if the price is right (and the lighting’s good)? Think again.
This is survival, baby.
And reality bites.
