Autoextremist Hates Everyone- With A Vengeance!

Sweet Pete DeLorenzo has made no bones about where he stands on the bailout, and having lashed out at the nattering nabobs of negativity (us), he’s turning attention to the old MSM and its coverage of the great bailout begathon of ’08. As a rash of common sense thinking about Detroit metastasizes into the mainstream, DeLorenzo is doubling down on his affection for Motown, and conducting interviews with whomever will listen to his rah-rah routine. In today’s Autoextremist Rant, he takes on the perception gap, that mythical construct which prevents the benighted masses from appreciating the truly great products Detroit offers. “The Perception Gap that exists out there for the Detroit automakers isn’t narrowing,” argues DeLorenzo, “it’s actually growing wider. Because when Americans get what minimal news they’re willing to digest – and only because it’s pre-packaged in carefully doled-out sound bites – then the Old Detroit will perennially overshadow the New Detroit, hands down.”

“The din out there in the media right now is so anti-Detroit, anti-“bailout” that I welcome the opportunity to present the other side of the debate, even if it appears with each passing day that Detroit is running out of time and unable to break through the negative media clutter that envelopes the industry at every turn. And after that death march of a hearing before the Senate Banking Committee yesterday, I’m even more pessimistic,” writes the Author of “The United States Of Toyota.” Why the pessimism, Mr DeLorenzo? “The message in that hearing room was clear: Detroit put itself in the shape it finds itself in by building bad, low-tech cars that nobody wants. That they were regurgitating the now-obligatory woeful misperception of Detroit that has spread across the country – a Detroit that hasn’t existed for the better part of a decade, by the way – was obvious. The fact that these Senators weren’t aware of the kind of ultra-competitive products that these companies have out now was predictable. And the fact that they weren’t aware of the kind of leading edge technological development that Detroit is actively engaged in was predictable too.”

But DeLorenzo never really debunks the “perception gap” he blames for unfairly dooming Detroit to oblivion. Clearly he’s leaving that up to the truth-tellers at gmfactsandfiction.com. But even after you point to all the Malibus and Enclaves that supposedly make up DeLorenzo’s “New Detroit,” there’s no basis for arguing that Americans are not justified in their hesitance to buy GM’s products. Much less that this hesitance is somehow not Detroit’s own damn fault. In fact, it’s a little amusing to try to postulate the conditions under which DeLorenzo might not support a bailout of his former employers.

And though it’s easy to simply lambast the “drive by media” and johnny-come-lately senatorial grandstanders, these ad hominem attacks never touch on the substance of the issue. After all, they wouldn’t have much of an opinion either way unless Detroit was asking for their (our) money. And now that Detroit is asking for a few extra bucks from all of us during these tough times, is it so unrealistic for even the least-informed to resist an involuntary investment in firms that we know of only from decades of sub-par products, layoffs, plant closings and lost market share? DeLorenzo is right, there’s a perception gap out there, but it doesn’t exist between the well-informed and the ignorant. It exists between the insulated, Detroit-dependent bailout-backers and everyone else.

Mr DeLorenzo and his ilk can “remind” everyone “that Detroit is a viable, relevant, strategic industry that’s part of the crucial fabric of America’s manufacturing base” until the cows come home, but repetition rarely makes things true. These reminders don’t convince anyone who has had bad experiences with GM products, and they don’t convince anyone who knows that GM needs a top-to-bottom CH11-based re-org to be viable. What they do convince everyone of is the reality that this industry and its flacks have a sense of entitlement that defies belief. The refusal to make tough choices, the refusal of the UAW to give up a red cent, the refusal to consider that everyone has fallen on hard times (especially the federal deficit), and the refusal to understand that this country became great because failing businesses were allowed to fail; these are the choices which are informing perceptions of the “New Detroit.”