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The next step in bailouts: reality TV

Finally, a bailout I can get behind.
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Finally, a bailout I can get behind. No, not the Save the Dead Whales bailout set for Congressional approval in our newly-minted socialist CEO’s paradise south of the border, the one hammered together to swap empty bank accounts for full ones so the Big Three auto(sic) makers can survive to die another day. That bailout still has me baffled.

The bailout I’m down with is one that hits closer to home. A writer in The New Republic — reported in the New York Times — is urging the Obama Mama administration to bailout, well, writers. No, seriously. It seems someone who was paying attention in high school American History, a class virtually guaranteed to put even ADHD kids to sleep, remembered the Federal Writers Project, one of the New Deal programs. It paid writers to write the oral histories of backwoods hillbillies who couldn’t write themselves and produce reams of studies and guides to the various states, themselves invaluable to hobos aimlessly riding the rails and seeing the sights.

Another wag, possibly the only other person wired enough to keep his eyes open during history class, takes the tantalizing prospect of government largesse for the wordy classes even further. Likening writers more to farmers than WPA workers, he suggests we borrow a page from the Agricultural Adjustment Act and simply pay writers, of which there are arguably too many, to not write, in much the same way as we pay farmers to not farm or Canadian senators to not… do whatever they’re supposed to do.

As much as I enjoy inflicting my view of the world on all of you, the idea of being paid not to write has, since 2002, been part of my personal financial plan. While I have too much pride and gratitude to accept money from Pique for not writing, I have no such bourgeois barriers when it comes to taking payment from others to not write.

VANOC, for example. Having popped up occasionally on their radar screens — I know you’re watching — for various unflattering things I’ve said about the Holympics, the IOC’s culture of corporate greed and corruption and that body’s biennial addiction to unleashing economic weapons of vast construction, I’ve been saving the real howls of vitriol for next autumn and winter. So over-the-top do I intend to get in my hyperbolic bloviating against all things Olympic that it’ll only make sense for VANOC to pay me not to write during the first few months of 2010.

My silence wouldn’t come cheap. Cheaper for sure than the Sliding Centre. For that matter, cheaper than the cost of making ice at the Sliding Centre… for a day. But the peace of mind a mindless Pique back page filled with happy images of happy Olympic tourists and athletes would bring is surely worth, oh say, six figures and some swag from whichever corporate sponsors aren’t in bankruptcy by then. Talk to my agent. Okay, talk to my agent if I ever get one.

Being a realist, I’m resigned to the fact no one is going to pay me to not write between now and then, and at least one local paper in California has outsourced news writing to India, which might explain some of the weird things I read in Vancouver newspapers. So to stave off having Maxed Out penned in Bangalore, here we go again. Today’s topic, such as it is, isn’t about Canada’s newest NGO — parliament — the upcoming season to be jolly, the pending grand opening of the Peak 2 Peak gondola or Whistler’s new decorating scheme: earth tones.

It is about the 15 billion bucks about to be funneled into life support for the North American automakers and the much smaller amount Canada’s government-in-waiting… and waiting… and waiting, might eventually get around to throwing at the Big Three’s Canuck branch plants.

That all the bailout bucks flowing to the car companies are a remedy in search of a viable patient goes without saying. The problem with our indigenous automakers isn’t entirely one of bad management, poor products, bloated payrolls and a shaky serac of unfunded pension commitments, although all of those things have conspired to make GM, Chrysler and Ford the most likely candidates to be companies studied in history departments as opposed to business schools.

The main problems with the Diminishing Three is readily traced back to the simple fact that global auto supply far outstrips demand and more importantly, what demand there is tends to favour well-built, well-equipped, efficient cars, which is to say Toyotas, Hondas, BMWs, et. al.

I’ve tried to buy North American cars. The one parked in my driveway has a Chevy badge on it, although its DNA is more Suzuki than Chev. And it’s pretty much a poster child for some of the woes GM has brought on itself. It’s a reasonably reliable, reasonably comfortable SUVette. Its four-cylinder engine sips gas and its four-wheel drive plows through snow berms. But it is spartan. There are no upscale options, things like door locks and windshield wipers, and Chevy decided it wasn’t making money on it — largely because there were no upscale options available — so they don’t make it any more.

To address the supply/demand and building cars no one wants issues, I have a much better plan than simply throwing taxpayers’ money down the motor city’s rathole. And as a bonus, it’ll provide the kind of mindless entertainment North American’s crave: yet another stupid reality TV show.

The working title is American Car Survivor Idol. The premise is simple. Each week we trot out the CEOs of GM, Chrysler and Ford to go head to head against each other with their best vehicle in a specific category — subcompacts, luxury, sport utility, pickup, etc. Touting the virtues of their products, and being grilled by a panel of skeptical judges, the final vote would be up to the American and Canadian public, thus alleviating CTV and Global from cloning a tepid knockoff of the American version of the show.

The winner each week would remain in production; the loser relegated to the dustbin of history by being symbolically dropped into an industrial shredder while an aging heavy metal rock band blares out power chords in the background. When the show has run its course, the remaining “Survivor Idols,” would all be manufactured by one robust car company — name to be decided in a sequel reality TV show — and would, demonstrably, be the cars America and Canada wants. Another sequel would see the current CEOs dropped off on a remote island where they would… be left to eat each other, all Lord of the Flies like.

Now if I can just figure out how to incorporate dancing into this I’m sure it’ll be a hit.