Yesterday, US carmaker Saturn—a subsidiary of General Motors—failed. As soon as I heard the news, I tweeted: “Different kind of car—different kind of car company. Well, not so much: http://tr.im/Agkc (I own a 15-year old Saturn SL2).” In quick succession, I tweeted:
“Saturn was doing fine independently. Too fine for GM, apparently, as it stupidly spun the company back in years ago.”
“1994 Saturn SL2 is the only American car I’ve owned since 1968 (that was a ‘66 Chevy Bel-Air). Still own the Saturn, still hoping it lasts.”
Shortly after I got home, I got a call from Tiffany Hsu, a staff writer on the business desk of the Los Angeles Times. She’d seen my comments on Twitter and wanted to talk Saturn.
I mostly don’t talk to reporters anymore; if I have anything remotely approaching worthwhile to say, I’ll do it here. But I’ve made two exceptions lately: I spoke with Hart Van Denburg of local alt-weekly City Pages about TwinCitiesTwitter and I spoke with Hsu of the Los Angeles Times because I was familiar with and mostly appreciate her byline.
We talked for a good while about Saturn, GM, and what comes after capitalism. I mentioned that I thought GM should have had its corporate charter revoked—not just for the Saturn fiasco, but for a wide variety of bad, stupid, and harmful acts its made over its history. Instead we have a US Supreme Court considering extending corporate personhood even further.
Predictably, none of that made it into Hsu’s article, but I did get the closing quote: “I’m upset because here we have another major American corporation screwing things up as totally as humanly possible,” Fraase said.
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