Like most old people, I am quick to criticize or carp about the kids today and their apparent lack of moral values, which. unfortunately, their parents and grandparents never did a thorough job of instilling in them. Then I see a ray of sunshine piercing the grey of today when I read in the NY Times about the various prestigious b-schools where business ethics has become one of the more popular courses.
At Wharton/Penn they now have several professors teaching business ethics where formerly they had one. At the Harvard Business School, nearly 20% of the graduating M.B.A. class, about 160, have signed a student-generated pledge of good business ethics "to serve the greater good"and to take social responsibility for their actions. At Columbia Business School. in addition to requiring the ethics course, the students have formed a "Leadership and Ethics Board" and sponsor ethical lectures.
It looks like the shameful histories of Enron. MCI, AIG, Madoff, toxic loans and shady hedge funds have sunk in, and the kids today are hearing the message. I don't know how long the effect will last because greed has a way of insinuating itself into the corporate world, but I am hopeful that this new generation have seen enough---and had enough---to keep that responsible perspective. Let us pray.
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Friday, May 29, 2009
HERE WE GO AGAIN---15 NEW ROUNDS!
I have been following the saga of Father Cutie (pronounced KOO'-tee-ay), the Roman Catholic priest known as "Father Oprah" because of his popularity with the Hispanics in the Miami and South Florida area and his radio show on Radio Paz broadcast in South Florida, the Americas and Spain. Handsome and charismatic, he had the pining housewives of South Florida sighing and gushing over him. Then the bombshell exploded: photos of Father Cutie, dallying on the beach in somewhat intimate and amorous poses with a very attractive young woman were published, and the you-know-what hit the fan.
He was interviewed on one of the morning shows (without his clerical collar) and asked some probing questions by the woman host, which, to his credit, he handled in a forthright manner. He admitted to being in love and having had a relationship with the young woman the last two years and that he had known her and been friends for several years. He professes that this relationship was the first rupture of his vow of celibacy. He said that he had been in consultation with various clerics including his Archbishop regarding his tension and conflict between his clerical vows and his overpowering passionate love for this woman.
Then I read today that he has left the Roman Catholics and joined the Anglo-Catholics, known as the Episcopal Church of America, where he and girl friend, Ruhama Buni Cavellis, a thirty-five year old divorcee, were photographed with the Bishop of South Florida and other clerics in a smiling portrait. He will not be allowed to serve as a priest in the Episcopal Church until he has spent some time in the church and fulfilled "certain requirements". But, guess who is delivering the sermon this Sunday in Trinity Episcopal Church in Miami? You got it---the forty-year-old Mr. Handsome himself. I'll bet the church will be overflowing.
I also see that his former Catholic Archbishop, the Very Rev. John Favarola, was shocked by the decision and claims that the former Father Cutie had said zilch to him about leaving the church when he met with Father Oprah in early May and that he had not had any word from his counterpart, the Episcopal Bishop of South Florida, which he found disturbing for ecumenical relations.
As an Episcopalian myself, I have to chuckle. I love my church, but I have to comment they are gifted with an ardent love of controversy, a gift for shooting themselves in the foot, and generally stirring up the pot. This is the same Episcopal Church that a few years ago at General Convention elected a gay priest in New Hampshire as a Bishop, thereby throwing the Anglican Communion, the international association of Anglican churches, including the Episcopals in the U.S., the Church of England, and Anglican churches in Africa and other parts of the world into a state of chaotic agitation. The African churches of the Anglican Communion, which number about 33,000,000 were ready to kick the Episcopal Church of America, which number about 2,000,000, out of the Communion. It also created a rift in the American Episcopal Church, pitting conservatives against liberals and causing certain really conservative churches and even a couple of dioceses to split off and join CANA (the Convocation of Anglicans in North America), fostered by the Anglican church of Nigeria who even appointed a Bishop to run C.A.N.A. in the U.S.
Personally, to my mind, this controversy of appointing a gay bishop is history, since elected, a fact of life and to be accepted, but I know plenty of Episcopalians who resent that decision, plus it is still a thorn in the side of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the titular head of the Anglican Communion, who is constantly trying to maintain the unity of the Communion, being the peacemaker between the Africans and the Americans,
The point is the Episcopal Church is frequently a storm center of its own devices and loves it! I do hope the Anglo-Catholics and the Roman Catholics will still speak to each other! I'm sure there will be more to comment on in the near future. Stay tuned. Welcome to the club, Father Oprah! You'll fit right in and be a main attraction for some time---a real contender in our ring!
He was interviewed on one of the morning shows (without his clerical collar) and asked some probing questions by the woman host, which, to his credit, he handled in a forthright manner. He admitted to being in love and having had a relationship with the young woman the last two years and that he had known her and been friends for several years. He professes that this relationship was the first rupture of his vow of celibacy. He said that he had been in consultation with various clerics including his Archbishop regarding his tension and conflict between his clerical vows and his overpowering passionate love for this woman.
Then I read today that he has left the Roman Catholics and joined the Anglo-Catholics, known as the Episcopal Church of America, where he and girl friend, Ruhama Buni Cavellis, a thirty-five year old divorcee, were photographed with the Bishop of South Florida and other clerics in a smiling portrait. He will not be allowed to serve as a priest in the Episcopal Church until he has spent some time in the church and fulfilled "certain requirements". But, guess who is delivering the sermon this Sunday in Trinity Episcopal Church in Miami? You got it---the forty-year-old Mr. Handsome himself. I'll bet the church will be overflowing.
I also see that his former Catholic Archbishop, the Very Rev. John Favarola, was shocked by the decision and claims that the former Father Cutie had said zilch to him about leaving the church when he met with Father Oprah in early May and that he had not had any word from his counterpart, the Episcopal Bishop of South Florida, which he found disturbing for ecumenical relations.
As an Episcopalian myself, I have to chuckle. I love my church, but I have to comment they are gifted with an ardent love of controversy, a gift for shooting themselves in the foot, and generally stirring up the pot. This is the same Episcopal Church that a few years ago at General Convention elected a gay priest in New Hampshire as a Bishop, thereby throwing the Anglican Communion, the international association of Anglican churches, including the Episcopals in the U.S., the Church of England, and Anglican churches in Africa and other parts of the world into a state of chaotic agitation. The African churches of the Anglican Communion, which number about 33,000,000 were ready to kick the Episcopal Church of America, which number about 2,000,000, out of the Communion. It also created a rift in the American Episcopal Church, pitting conservatives against liberals and causing certain really conservative churches and even a couple of dioceses to split off and join CANA (the Convocation of Anglicans in North America), fostered by the Anglican church of Nigeria who even appointed a Bishop to run C.A.N.A. in the U.S.
Personally, to my mind, this controversy of appointing a gay bishop is history, since elected, a fact of life and to be accepted, but I know plenty of Episcopalians who resent that decision, plus it is still a thorn in the side of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the titular head of the Anglican Communion, who is constantly trying to maintain the unity of the Communion, being the peacemaker between the Africans and the Americans,
The point is the Episcopal Church is frequently a storm center of its own devices and loves it! I do hope the Anglo-Catholics and the Roman Catholics will still speak to each other! I'm sure there will be more to comment on in the near future. Stay tuned. Welcome to the club, Father Oprah! You'll fit right in and be a main attraction for some time---a real contender in our ring!
Monday, May 25, 2009
IN MEMORIAM---FOR ALFRED
Today is a very special day in my life, as it is for so many who have lived through world wars, police actions and wars on terror. All of us should bow our heads in prayer, remembering those who died for us.
In my case, I always remember my brother, Alfred, who was killed in World War II. He was the middle brother, I being the youngest who just missed out on that war, with the eldest, Henry, also in combat as a Navigator in the 15th Air Force in Italy where he flew 35 missions. Alfred was a T/5, the equivalent of a Corporal, in an L.S.T., the amphibian landing crafts that convert into tanks once they come out of the water , and was in on the invasion of the island of Leyte in the Phillippines in November 1944. Alfred had been part of the A.S.T.P. (Army Specialized Training Program) where he had been sent to college by the Army with the ultimate aim of becoming an officer and by a quirk of fate was assigned to the University of Cincinnati, much to my mother's delight since she lived in Hyde Park, a suburb of Cincinnati. Unfortunately, this idyll was short-lived, less than a year, because the Army needed more troops for the impending Pacific invasions, and in the spring of 1944 Alfred was assigned to L.S.T. training at Fort Ord on the Monterey Peninsula of California.
Alfred got home for a final furlough in July of 1944. He and I had gone to prep school together at The Hill School in Pottstown PA where Alfred graduated two years before me. When I saw him on this last furlough, I was taller than he for the first time---one of those silly memories you keep in that storehouse called your brain. I also felt more adult and less the kid brother on this occasion.
He went back to California, then to Hawaii before embarking on the big show in the Phillippines. While battling in Leyte, he contracted jungle rot on his arm, a fungus infection that temporarily put him in the hospital. He missed the battle of Ormac on Leyte, one of the last key engagements there but was anxious, as are all soldiers, to get back to his outfit and his buddies. He returned to his company on January 8, 1945 and was assigned to guard duty in a bivouac area. The battle was over, but there were remnants of Japanese soldiers holed up in the hills. One such group had a mortar and fired one shell---and it got Alfred. There is an old military cliche to the effect that you worry less about the bullet with your name on it than the one which says "To Whom It May Concern", and, ironically, that's how he died. He had turned twenty-one the previous November. Alfred was ultimately buried in the military cemetery outside Manila. The family thought it fit and proper that he should be with his fallen comrades, plus what was to be gained by reliving the pain of his death again with a funeral at home.
My father had planned to go to Manila and see his grave in 1969, but ill health prevented the trip. I had occasion to be in Asia on business in Taiwan and Hong Kong in 1977 and decided that I would make the pilgrimage to the Phillippines to see Alfred's grave. I flew into Manila on a Sunday evening, at that time under martial law with soldiers roaming the streets with rifles and machine guns strapped to their backs and imposing a nightly curfew as they were dealing with Communist insurgents. The next day I hired a cab to the cemetery. As you are probably aware, all U.S. military cemeteries are American property in the foreign country and maintained and paid for by the U.S.A.
I went to the guardhouse where I was shown the records containing the names and grave numbers and quickly located Alfred's grave. I thought after thirty-two years I could handle this moment emotionally, but, when I found his grave, I knelt to pray and totally broke down in tears. I took some pictures. I flew out that same day.
I thank God that I made that trip.
That is why Memorial Day is special to me---and to many others. Lest we forget...
In my case, I always remember my brother, Alfred, who was killed in World War II. He was the middle brother, I being the youngest who just missed out on that war, with the eldest, Henry, also in combat as a Navigator in the 15th Air Force in Italy where he flew 35 missions. Alfred was a T/5, the equivalent of a Corporal, in an L.S.T., the amphibian landing crafts that convert into tanks once they come out of the water , and was in on the invasion of the island of Leyte in the Phillippines in November 1944. Alfred had been part of the A.S.T.P. (Army Specialized Training Program) where he had been sent to college by the Army with the ultimate aim of becoming an officer and by a quirk of fate was assigned to the University of Cincinnati, much to my mother's delight since she lived in Hyde Park, a suburb of Cincinnati. Unfortunately, this idyll was short-lived, less than a year, because the Army needed more troops for the impending Pacific invasions, and in the spring of 1944 Alfred was assigned to L.S.T. training at Fort Ord on the Monterey Peninsula of California.
Alfred got home for a final furlough in July of 1944. He and I had gone to prep school together at The Hill School in Pottstown PA where Alfred graduated two years before me. When I saw him on this last furlough, I was taller than he for the first time---one of those silly memories you keep in that storehouse called your brain. I also felt more adult and less the kid brother on this occasion.
He went back to California, then to Hawaii before embarking on the big show in the Phillippines. While battling in Leyte, he contracted jungle rot on his arm, a fungus infection that temporarily put him in the hospital. He missed the battle of Ormac on Leyte, one of the last key engagements there but was anxious, as are all soldiers, to get back to his outfit and his buddies. He returned to his company on January 8, 1945 and was assigned to guard duty in a bivouac area. The battle was over, but there were remnants of Japanese soldiers holed up in the hills. One such group had a mortar and fired one shell---and it got Alfred. There is an old military cliche to the effect that you worry less about the bullet with your name on it than the one which says "To Whom It May Concern", and, ironically, that's how he died. He had turned twenty-one the previous November. Alfred was ultimately buried in the military cemetery outside Manila. The family thought it fit and proper that he should be with his fallen comrades, plus what was to be gained by reliving the pain of his death again with a funeral at home.
My father had planned to go to Manila and see his grave in 1969, but ill health prevented the trip. I had occasion to be in Asia on business in Taiwan and Hong Kong in 1977 and decided that I would make the pilgrimage to the Phillippines to see Alfred's grave. I flew into Manila on a Sunday evening, at that time under martial law with soldiers roaming the streets with rifles and machine guns strapped to their backs and imposing a nightly curfew as they were dealing with Communist insurgents. The next day I hired a cab to the cemetery. As you are probably aware, all U.S. military cemeteries are American property in the foreign country and maintained and paid for by the U.S.A.
I went to the guardhouse where I was shown the records containing the names and grave numbers and quickly located Alfred's grave. I thought after thirty-two years I could handle this moment emotionally, but, when I found his grave, I knelt to pray and totally broke down in tears. I took some pictures. I flew out that same day.
I thank God that I made that trip.
That is why Memorial Day is special to me---and to many others. Lest we forget...
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
KEEPING THE PECKER UP---SO TO SPEAK
I want to keep you abreast, as promised in my blog of May 6, 2009, regarding our new neighbors, the pileated woodpeckers, who took over a dead palm tree next to our house and have built "apartments". I haven't seen Dad recently, but Mom is very much in evidence, constantly peering from one of her windows to see what's happening in the neighborhood. We started putting out bread crumbs on a railing on our front porch near her apartment, and they are disappearing regularly. in fact, I think she quite accepts us now, for when I go out on the front porch and descend the steps, if she is perched on the side of the palm, she simply glances at me and then goes about her business. It's nice being accepted by the new neighbors...
I haven't seen any chicks, so I don't know what the plan is. Maybe just get the place ready and populate it later. With that, I'll leave you with an old British expression of good will---nothing else intended---just keep your pecker up!
I haven't seen any chicks, so I don't know what the plan is. Maybe just get the place ready and populate it later. With that, I'll leave you with an old British expression of good will---nothing else intended---just keep your pecker up!
Monday, May 18, 2009
THE PLAGUE OF PLAGIARISM
I read on the net today that columnist Maureen Dowd of The New York Times is accused of plagiarism or lack of attribution in using someone else's quotation. It seems in one of her columns regarding Dick Cheney and torture she quoted almost literally from another journalist and failed to note it. This is so easy to do in this Age of Information where we are saturated with a blizzard of information and sources. It must be exceedingly difficult to remember what and where you read something you like, as you mentally file it away, with the result that you may forget where it came from and thereby fail to make proper attribution.
I read Maureen Dowd and find her a perceptive columnist, although she does have a tendency to beat the proverbial dead horse to death, especially on the subject of W. and his cronies, especially Dick Cheney. which must drive the neo-cons to drink. I read a few blogs today on this act of plagiarism (or lack of attribution, take your pick) from neo-cons and they were having a field day. citing the liberal conspiracy to besmudge W. and Cheney, those great patriots, and swiping at the Obama crew who are giving the country away. The extremes of both sides. I'm sure, are having a field day.
Some years ago, a very capable History Professor had become President of my alma mater, Hamilton College, for a number of years and done an excellent job of guiding the college when they were going through the transition from a male college to co-educational by absorbing Kirkland College into Hamilton, plus phasing out the old fraternity system, which created a long and divisive struggle among the alumni, including my old fraternity which held out for years in futile resistance before finally acceding. This President resigned under pressure when he was accused of making a speech and failing to attribute some of his remarks. I think there was a bit of academician infighting going on within the faculty and someone was out to get the Pres, I've been told (although I've never heard it substantiated). The charges cost a college president his job.
Stealing ideas and parceling them out as your own is one thing---that is serious and dead wrong and should be publicized and punished, if provable. I strongly suspect, however, that this accusation can be overdone, especially for the reason I list above: that the plethora of information accrued today can confuse and confound anyone.
I think Maureen Dowd is a responsible journalist, strong-minded, witty, ascerbic and liberal. She will have her share of enemies on the right out to get her, but I think her integrity will prevail in this dispute; she's too savvy to have intentionally plagiarized. If I wrote as many columns as she, I'd probably have some critics snapping at my heels, too!
I read Maureen Dowd and find her a perceptive columnist, although she does have a tendency to beat the proverbial dead horse to death, especially on the subject of W. and his cronies, especially Dick Cheney. which must drive the neo-cons to drink. I read a few blogs today on this act of plagiarism (or lack of attribution, take your pick) from neo-cons and they were having a field day. citing the liberal conspiracy to besmudge W. and Cheney, those great patriots, and swiping at the Obama crew who are giving the country away. The extremes of both sides. I'm sure, are having a field day.
Some years ago, a very capable History Professor had become President of my alma mater, Hamilton College, for a number of years and done an excellent job of guiding the college when they were going through the transition from a male college to co-educational by absorbing Kirkland College into Hamilton, plus phasing out the old fraternity system, which created a long and divisive struggle among the alumni, including my old fraternity which held out for years in futile resistance before finally acceding. This President resigned under pressure when he was accused of making a speech and failing to attribute some of his remarks. I think there was a bit of academician infighting going on within the faculty and someone was out to get the Pres, I've been told (although I've never heard it substantiated). The charges cost a college president his job.
Stealing ideas and parceling them out as your own is one thing---that is serious and dead wrong and should be publicized and punished, if provable. I strongly suspect, however, that this accusation can be overdone, especially for the reason I list above: that the plethora of information accrued today can confuse and confound anyone.
I think Maureen Dowd is a responsible journalist, strong-minded, witty, ascerbic and liberal. She will have her share of enemies on the right out to get her, but I think her integrity will prevail in this dispute; she's too savvy to have intentionally plagiarized. If I wrote as many columns as she, I'd probably have some critics snapping at my heels, too!
Monday, May 11, 2009
TIGER, TIGER, BURNING BRIGHT---AND SOON!
Sports writers are a unique and opportunistic bunch, sometimes with a penchant to create news and not just report it. When you get down to it, this quality isn't unique to sports writers but many other journalists, as well, but sports writers have a special gift for it.
Witness the Players Championship at Sawgrass, Ponte Vedra, Florida which ended yesterday with a cool and imperturbable Swede named Henrik Stenson demolishing the field. And, to read the sport pages, you would think Tiger Woods choked, fell apart and is in trouble. Agreed, he was not the usual Tiger with that lethal streak which sees him at his best the last day. But, sports guys and gals, let's get real: he was off the competitive circuit for nine months after his reconstructive knee surgery and is still reestablishing his game. He says the knee is fine, but I would think that some physiological adjustments or alterations occurred in view of the gravity of such surgery and Tiger is still adapting to it. I predict in the next month or so, he will get his act together and win the U.S. Open or the Brit version, called internationally The Open, not the British Open.
Plus consider another fact: Tiger has raised the bar of excellence, and there are a bevy of young talented top guns anxious to take on the master. How often have you seen that scenario played out in sports of the old champion inspiring a host of new challengers?
An athlete like Tiger--or Jack Nicklaus or Ben Hogan----doesn't come along every five years; it's more of a generational thing, every twenty or twenty-five. And even the champions lose. Do you remember how often Jack Nicklaus finished second---more than he did first!
So, I suggest, sports writers of America and the world (I know for a fact the British sports writers are as prone to swift judgements, maybe even more so than their Yankee counterparts), the king is not dead. Be ready to wax ecstatic with purple hyperbolic prose again when the Tiger starts to prowl! He'll burn bright again!
Witness the Players Championship at Sawgrass, Ponte Vedra, Florida which ended yesterday with a cool and imperturbable Swede named Henrik Stenson demolishing the field. And, to read the sport pages, you would think Tiger Woods choked, fell apart and is in trouble. Agreed, he was not the usual Tiger with that lethal streak which sees him at his best the last day. But, sports guys and gals, let's get real: he was off the competitive circuit for nine months after his reconstructive knee surgery and is still reestablishing his game. He says the knee is fine, but I would think that some physiological adjustments or alterations occurred in view of the gravity of such surgery and Tiger is still adapting to it. I predict in the next month or so, he will get his act together and win the U.S. Open or the Brit version, called internationally The Open, not the British Open.
Plus consider another fact: Tiger has raised the bar of excellence, and there are a bevy of young talented top guns anxious to take on the master. How often have you seen that scenario played out in sports of the old champion inspiring a host of new challengers?
An athlete like Tiger--or Jack Nicklaus or Ben Hogan----doesn't come along every five years; it's more of a generational thing, every twenty or twenty-five. And even the champions lose. Do you remember how often Jack Nicklaus finished second---more than he did first!
So, I suggest, sports writers of America and the world (I know for a fact the British sports writers are as prone to swift judgements, maybe even more so than their Yankee counterparts), the king is not dead. Be ready to wax ecstatic with purple hyperbolic prose again when the Tiger starts to prowl! He'll burn bright again!
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
ATTENTION: SMALL CONDOS FOR SALE (MAYBE)!
Little did my wife and I realize when we built a home in Sanibel, Florida six and a half years ago, having already owned a beachfront condo there for thirty-odd years, that we would be going into the condo business. But here we are, with at least five new condos, albeit very tiny, on our home property. The construction company, an Equal Opportunity Employer using both male and female, is hard at work. And it seems to be a two-person team.
Right next to our house stands a tall palm tree which unfortunately was blighted by some fungus infection that killed it. We were contemplating its removal when, to our surprise and delight, a pair of pileated woodpeckers discovered this prime property and are in process of building several furnished apartments therein in the form of five deep holes stuffed with nesting straw! I don't know if they have a family stashed away some where waiting for the construction to be completed, or if this pair are preparing to do the wild thing to populate it. You have to admire their good taste in choosing a site right on a golf course, only half mile from the Gulf of Mexico---a really prime location. Plus, to really clinch the deal, we've got a swimming pool.
So, if you're interested in a small condo, come on down: we can negotiate terms, but, I want to warn you in advance, pileated woodpeckers are very territorial and will not brook competition lightly. In fact, I think you would be well advised, on second thought, to let well enough alone and leave the condos to them.
The construction is proceeding at a rapid pace. Stay tuned: we'll keep you posted!
Right next to our house stands a tall palm tree which unfortunately was blighted by some fungus infection that killed it. We were contemplating its removal when, to our surprise and delight, a pair of pileated woodpeckers discovered this prime property and are in process of building several furnished apartments therein in the form of five deep holes stuffed with nesting straw! I don't know if they have a family stashed away some where waiting for the construction to be completed, or if this pair are preparing to do the wild thing to populate it. You have to admire their good taste in choosing a site right on a golf course, only half mile from the Gulf of Mexico---a really prime location. Plus, to really clinch the deal, we've got a swimming pool.
So, if you're interested in a small condo, come on down: we can negotiate terms, but, I want to warn you in advance, pileated woodpeckers are very territorial and will not brook competition lightly. In fact, I think you would be well advised, on second thought, to let well enough alone and leave the condos to them.
The construction is proceeding at a rapid pace. Stay tuned: we'll keep you posted!
Saturday, May 2, 2009
CHARLIE WILSON---YOU WERE RIGHT---I HOPE!
Back in the early fifties (yes, unfortunately, I'm old enough to remember that period!), President Dwight David Eisenhower had a Secretary of Defense named Charlie Wilson who had been Chairman and C.E.O. of General Motors, at that time a behemoth of an organization, to paraphrase Shakespeare, bestriding the world like a colossus. With the authority of his high position, he smugly assured us, "As General Motors goes, so goes the country." There were quite a few certitudes back in the fifties, that period of peaceful and steady growth of American economic and political power, and the premier position of G.M. was one of those givens. Wow, was Charlie Wilson right---but not quite as he intended that statement!
It is mindboggling, having lived as long as I, to witness the decline, the degradation, of General Motors, Chrysler and, to a more limited extent, Ford. It is painful when you consider the number of employees this fall from grace affects and the ripple effect it has on so many ancillary companies, nationally and internationally. Did we ever think we would live to see the auto giants nationalized (even, our new President tells us, temporarily)?
President Barack Obama likes to use the image of the nation as a large ocean liner and the inherent difficulty of changing the course of so large an object as a huge ship. In some part, this has been the problem of the auto industry in America: they have been so big and unwieldy and slow to change.
Unfortunately, part of this has to be ascribed to their own arrogance and complacency. "Don't you consumers tell us what to make---we know what is good for you." Of course the public was also complacent and smug; after all ,we had cheap gas, so what the hell does it matter?
The hybrid concept and electric power pioneered especially by the Japanese auto makers is a prime example. Is there engineering so superior to ours? No, but their sense of priorities was superior, and our boys were happy making gas-guzzling SUVs and the like. Now we have to play catch-up.
I am getting tired of being fed the old line about American know-how and ingenuity, second to none. YES, IF WE HAVE THE RIGHT PRIORITIES. LOOK AT 1969 AND THE MOON SHOT. Maybe one of the good things to come out of this world economic crisis is that it is making us reassess those priorities. Let us hope and pray that we start this reevaluation process.
A new start, a new attitude: maybe then what's good for General Motors can be good for the country.
It is mindboggling, having lived as long as I, to witness the decline, the degradation, of General Motors, Chrysler and, to a more limited extent, Ford. It is painful when you consider the number of employees this fall from grace affects and the ripple effect it has on so many ancillary companies, nationally and internationally. Did we ever think we would live to see the auto giants nationalized (even, our new President tells us, temporarily)?
President Barack Obama likes to use the image of the nation as a large ocean liner and the inherent difficulty of changing the course of so large an object as a huge ship. In some part, this has been the problem of the auto industry in America: they have been so big and unwieldy and slow to change.
Unfortunately, part of this has to be ascribed to their own arrogance and complacency. "Don't you consumers tell us what to make---we know what is good for you." Of course the public was also complacent and smug; after all ,we had cheap gas, so what the hell does it matter?
The hybrid concept and electric power pioneered especially by the Japanese auto makers is a prime example. Is there engineering so superior to ours? No, but their sense of priorities was superior, and our boys were happy making gas-guzzling SUVs and the like. Now we have to play catch-up.
I am getting tired of being fed the old line about American know-how and ingenuity, second to none. YES, IF WE HAVE THE RIGHT PRIORITIES. LOOK AT 1969 AND THE MOON SHOT. Maybe one of the good things to come out of this world economic crisis is that it is making us reassess those priorities. Let us hope and pray that we start this reevaluation process.
A new start, a new attitude: maybe then what's good for General Motors can be good for the country.
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