The Big Three CEOs are appearing on Capitol Hill again today and amazingly they have swallowed their pride - or more likely acquiesced to political realities - and are NOT traveling to DC on their corporate jets.
In a strange case of art, or at least comedy, imitating life, Jon Stewart predicted the future on The Daily Show when the CEOs first went to the Hill via their corporate jets. In his commentary on the story, Stewart gave a fake quote from the CEOs that said, "What did you expect us to do, drive? Have you seen the cars we are making???"
Today, the Big Three's Big Three are driving to DC. And not just in any car. They are all three driving in hybrids. It as if they are saying, "I see your symbolism and raise you ours."
They are also offering to work for one dollar a year if Congress approves their bailout.
Please, please, some enterprising journalist out there report that while these guys might be coming to Washington in a (chauffeur driven) hybrid, they are still jetting around to their homes and vacation homes in their aforementioned Gulfstreams. (One of them actually lives in Washington State and works in Detroit, so you KNOW he is not using a hybrid to commute!) And while you are at it, please also remind us that if they get 40-plus billion of our tax dollars and still fail, each of them will walk away from the train wreck with hundred million dollar golden parachutes!
Tis The Season to Kill Workers
The Friday after Thanksgiving is the traditional kick off to the Christmas shopping season. It is the time when hopefully retailers get out of the red and become profitable for the year. That is the reason it is referred to as "Black Friday." Last Friday was "black" for an entirely different reason. The death toll - let that sink in, we are talking about Christmas shopping, not the War in Iraq - the death toll from Friday's shopping nationwide was three.
Now granted, two of the deaths - the Toys 'R Us shootings in California - were only marginally related to actual shopping, but the trampling death of a seasonal temporary employee at a Long Island Wal-Mart is perhaps the most troubling commentary on our culture I've ever heard. It is bad enough that people literally killed a store employee who got between them and a good deal on a wide-screen TV, but they actually got mad at police when the store closed because of the death. "Look, officer, I'm really sorry that guy got killed, but I waited in line since 3:00 this morning to get one of them big screen TVs!"
We are in trouble. When our materialism is elevated above human life - especially when it is worst around the celebration of the birth of Jesus - we are in deep, deep trouble.
A Powerful Voice is Silenced
The folk singer known simply as Odetta died from heart failure in New York this week at the age of 77.
Her deep voice and gut-wrenching emotion gave voice to so many songs of faith. Her version of "Mary Had a Baby" was as far as I am concerned the definitive rendering of that spiritual. She also gave voice to the Civil Rights movement, notably singing "I'm On My Way" at the March on Washington moments before Martin Luther King delivered his iconic "I Have a Dream" speech. Though only in her early 30s at the time, Dr. King called Odetta the "Queen of American Folk Music." She was to sing that same song at Barack Obama's inauguration, an engagement she viewed as the fulfilment of her life's work and dreams.
Time magazine noted, "Some folks sing songs. Odetta testified."
Poet Laureate Maya Angelou said of her, "If only one could be sure that every 50 years a voice and a soul like Odetta's would come along, the centuries would pass so quickly and painlessly we would hardly recognize time."
Odetta sang right up to the time of her homegoing, her voice growing even more expressive with age. She may be gone now, but her voice and her influence are without a doubt timeless.
Read Time's obituary of Odetta here.
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