Editorial musings
Wednesday, 26 September 2007
(Borrowing from jcb) AFLAC auditions at Piedmont Park this morning….
I’m enjoying that the NYTimes has (finally) unlocked their editorial content (and much of their archives). Not that I agree with their various voices, but I think they have good, thoughtful people writing their regular opinion columns, and that makes reading them worthwhile.
David Brooks’s piece from yesterday presents data I had not seen before; I reserve my conclusions for a while, though. What is useful is which sub-demographic represents the group who ends up voting. I’m not sure that we won’t see that we get a load of new voters from a group that tips things in unanticipated ways. Anyway, too bad Brooks resorts to a cheap shot at John Edwards for his final line.
BTW, are Brooks’s “high school educated women in the Midwest” pretty much equivalent to Janet Elder’s Wal-Mart women….
Now that the GM strike is over (pending affirmation by the membership), thoughtfulness is mandatory in any reasonable analysis. I kept thinking as I read/heard coverage of the strike issues that what it all comes down to is that GM has to make vehicles that sell. The most commanding components for most buyers are something that has to do with function/aesthetic and price, probably in either order depending on the buyer, the vehicle, and the particular moment the query is made. So, non-striking GM people need to come up with designs that will sell, and lineworkers need to do their part to allow the price to fit the market. Lest I sound pro-management, those folks should have had a pile of fine anthropologists and economists on their staff for decades giving them feedback on the ways of the world (note that I didn’t add: that they remain too ignorant of). Since GM’s market is global, they can’t think just or even primarily US/North America…for any of it—not just labor, but also design and all the rest.
PS Please don’t confuse musings with rants. Or I hope that’s true!