Bailout Watch 204: Freep Loves Them Some Bailout Pt. 2

I think it’s about time to dub Freep the official home of pro-bailout agitprop. When you make the Detroit News look like it’s being run by H.L. Mencken’s Tabasco-marinated ulcer, it’s time to rethink your priorities. Or adopt the tagline “fair and balanced.” Anyway, the Freep’s unabashed Detroit boosterism is reaching a fever pitch, with everyone capable of wielding subject and predicate pitching in for the noble cause of disguising self interest as principle. From old standby (and former Cassandra) Mark Phelan, to financial columnist Susan Tompor, to a condescending missive by the Freep’s editorial board, the latest issue rotates faster than a Baghdad Bob interview in Spin magazine. Let’s pop a Dramamine and take a look, shall we?

Even though Mark Phelan’s regular column came out two short days ago, he’s back to lead the good fight with “ 6 Myths About The Detroit 3.” Actually, it’s basically a rehash of his column “ Assistance Deserved, But With Conditions.” Then again, the Freep’s strategy seems to be based on volume rather than originality, recrafting the industry talking points into a million columns and fact lists.

Speaking of which, Phelan’s “6 Myths” bears a striking resemblance to GM’s unpersuasive GMfactsandfiction.com site. Both list valid critiques of GM/Detroit with a massive side of reductio ad absurdum and then “debunk” them one by one. In the process, we learn that Detroit does sell cars, “the creaky, leaky vehicles of the 1980s and ’90s are long gone,” not every American car is a gas guzzler.

The moral of Phelan’s adventure in debunking: to make Detroit look good you have to contrast (carefully selected) reality with the crudest possible negative stereotypes. Paging Ron Ziegler!

Financial columnist Susan Tompor reveals that Detroit is now a “dirty word.” Her column’s entitled “ Where’s The Love?” Of course, the column should be entitled “Where’s the $50b?” but whatever… Tompor’s fighting the good fight.

“I’ve always understood that many people do not like American cars or union workers or car company CEOs. I didn’t know that some really, really hate us,” writes Tompor as if she’d just had a DTS burnt on her lawn. And like Phelan, Tompor takes these haters to task for “rolling out so many of the tired clichés that applied to the Detroit automakers in the ’70s that I half expect to see these interviews filmed at Studio 54.”

Except that the only ones really bringing up grotesque clichés is the Detroit booster club. By twisting valid critiques into 70’s throwbacks and then taking them out, the Freep is playing “strawman and the flamethrower.” And as much fun as that game is, it’s not great for the old credibility. Nor is Tompor’s revelation that she “got so upset when a reporter on CNBC said automakers don’t deserve a bailout that my 10-year-old marched into the room and said: ‘I know how to fix this.’ And he turned the TV off.”

Another crucial aspect of the Freep’s propaganda offensive is rehabilitating the past. Specifically, casting the 1979 Chrysler bailout as a success and a blueprint for future action. These tasks went to business scribe Sarah Webster, who apparently took the assignment literally enough to title her pieces “ How the 1979 Bailout Worked” and “ Like 1979, Next Auto Rescue Won’t Be Easy.”

The first is by-the-books, describing details of the government plan and the fact that Chrysler was able to pay the government loans back. Webster does conveniently fail to note that the 1979 bailout “worked” in large part because Chrysler had several solid products with which to build its future.

The second piece also ignores the success of the “K” cars and minivans, preferring to credit government oversight for turning Chrysler around. And suggesting more of the same would work again. Of course, Webster also fails to mention that Chrysler employed more Americans in 1979 than all three Detroit firms now do combined. Not that it matters in any way.

Finally, the Freep lets us know what it really thinks in an editorial board polemic titled “ Lawmakers Must Grasp Value Of Detroit 3.” Ironically it has more news and less opinion than some of its so-called “news” coverage.