Give Rick a chance

There are two things that have been on my mind lately that I’d like to throw out for your comments. The first is a question: What, exactly, do the people who are criticizing the Israelis, expect them to do in lieu of their current actions against Hamas?

Should they simple accept that Hamas will launch 10-20 rockets per day into Israel and do nothing? And what exactly would be a “proportionate response?” Would that be to randomly fire an equal number of unguided missiles into the West Bank and let them fall where they may, regardless of the distribution of the civilian population?

My other thought is directed to all people of a more liberal persuasion: You should give the Reverend Rick Warren, and more importantly the people who follow him, a break over his speaking at the Obama inauguration.

I realize he and his followers stand for some things that you could never support. But while he is probably well to the right of you, he is a long way from the extreme end of the belief curve, and represents a moderating influence on many people.

Barack Obama only won 53% of the votes in November, which leaves a lot of Americans looking at him sideways, just waiting for a signal that he truly doesn’t care about people like them. Inviting Warren to speak was a political olive branch to a group of people whose support Obama will need if he is to solve the many problems facing our country. These problems are big beyond the imagination’s ability to grasp them, and we can’t afford a continuation of the political and social polarity that has kept us from addressing them for decades.

By definition, that means working with people with whom we may not be in complete agreement, and someone has to be the bigger person – the one who takes the first step. Isn’t that why you voted for Obama in the first place?

Can't forget the motor city...

When I was growing up in Warren, Ohio in the '60s, it had about 65,000 inhabitants and General Motors employed nearly 30,000 people there, building cars, truck engines, and assembling wiring harnesses. Those jobs paid high union wages and offered excellent health and retirement benefits (hence the local nickname, Generous Motors). Today the population is about 45,000 and the GM payroll is down to under 5,000 – and many of those jobs have been downgraded in pay and benefits.

We all drove GM cars back in the day; partly out of loyalty but also as part of an endless feedback loop in which you could not sell a used car unless it was a GM model, and no one would buy something they couldn’t sell later.

My grandfather gave me my first car -- a big, black 1948 Cadillac, so decrepit my parents wouldn’t let me drive it. Next came a 1952 Chevy followed by a chocolate brown 1972 Buick Electra 225 with a chocolate brown interior and vinyl roof. Then a ’71 Olds 442 succeeded by a ’71 Chevy Impala Super Sport – fire engine red, chrome reverse wheels and a sreamin’ small block V8 engine that got about 8 miles to the gallon if I babied it. Someday I’d like to have the car in the photo above, ('59 Caddy Eldorado) or maybe a new ‘Vette.

When I moved away from Ohio I lost my automotive way and owned a succession of European sedans. And while they were nice cars, driving them always made me feel vaguely pretentious and disloyal to my heritage. So a few years ago I went back to my GM roots and now have three pieces of “Detroit Iron” in the driveway. They are all nice cars. They’ve been trouble-free and each was much less expensive than their Japanese or European counterparts. So don’t hesitate to drive American. It won’t hurt and it might make you feel good.

This is all on my mind today because I had a drink last night with an old friend from Detroit, and we were talking about how S&P had just downgraded GM, and raised the possibility of bankruptcy, which would just be unimaginable to me. (In the last year the stock has gone from $40 per share to $5.) We talked about how many of our old friends from home depend on GM or Ford for either their job or their pension. And these are just about the last blue collar jobs in America that can support a truly middle-class life. It would be unbearably sad to see that disappear.