Southern Bookman

General Motors goes electric as GameStop Soars: A wild week for U.S. economy

Gamestop me if you've heard this one.

GM's going electric.

As a merry band of guerrilla stock traders besieged the hedge-fund short sellers, GM gave the astounding news that it will quit selling gasoline-and diesel-powered cars by 2035.

Damn, that'll probably be too late for me. But GM vows to sell 30 electric-powered cars, 40 percent of its product line, by 2025. My next car could be an battery-powered Sting Ray. 

Does anyone but me remember the old Lil Abner song, "What's Good for General Motors Is Good for the USA?"

The company, blasted by the Japanese and European car invasion years ago, doesn't have that kind of power anymore. But thanks to a bailout from the Obama administration - led by then Vice President Joe Biden - the automaker has battled back.

GM chairman and CEO Mary Barra, the architect of the company's electric future, said, “General Motors is joining governments and companies around the globe working to establish a safer, greener and better world. We encourage others to follow suit and make a significant impact on our industry and on the economy as a whole.”

The GM move might come too late to make a significant difference in reversing climate change. But it offers hope for future generations.

Soccer moms driving those big, fuel-thirsty Suburban SUVs spew a lot of CO2 into the atmosphere. The next generation of moms will drive electric SUVs, if GM fulfills its vision.

The GM bombshell raised the intensity of a volatile week for the American economy.

Just as old-time movie theaters appeared headed for history's teeming dump, those outlaw traders who boosted GameStop drove up megaplex company AMC's stock as well. The hedge fund sharks were crying crocodile tears, as the excellent Matt Taibbi reported in an extensive Substack post.

The GameStop frenzy led to a trading site called Robinhood halting trading of the company. Wasn't Robinhood the name of the Internet startup on HBO's show "Silicon Valley?" The week's frenzy resembled an episode of the show.

As Democratic U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez pointed out, Robinhood's action went against the eponymous Sherwood Forest outlaw's ethos to steal from the rich and give to the poor.

When the odious GOP Sen. Ted Cruz agreed with her, AOC rejected his support, accusing him of seeking to have her murdered by encouraging the Capitol rioters. 

The soaring stock prices of GameStock and AMC supported companies that flourished in the heyday of suburban shopping malls, now seen as dinosaurs. It's curious that the young traders would prop up those companies rather than some futuristic startup. And the GM news sounds a toll for the internal-combustible engine economy, which fueled - ha, ha - those malls.

General Motors is developing the new Ultium battery, which will make electric cars more affordable. The carmaker also is developing hydrogen technology, and plans to make all of its factories carbon-neutral by 2040.

Artificial intelligence, anyone? Well, robots won't unionize, at least for now.

Following Rupert Murdoch and the Wall Street Journal's editorial page skepticism about climate change, the WSJ played the GM story on its business front page, not on the newspaper's front page. It also dashed cold water by calling the GM plan "aspirational." In contrast, The New York Times made the announcement its lead front page story.

While the wild stock market wildfire is likely to burn out soon, the GM move from the internal combustion engine could bring major economic changes.

The move endangers Exxon and other big oil companies. In place of service stations, electric charging stations will be needed, but how will those be profitable?

Homes likely will be equipped with charging stations, which will generate excess electricity, drawing the ire of utilities like Georgia Power. And fossil fuels still will be needed to manufacture batteries, and keep those media streaming services going.

While Elon Musk's Tesla has pioneered the electric vehicles, GM's move looks like the proverbial game-changer for the economy. European automakers are also developing electric vehicles.

Illustrating the shift in corporate thinking, Ford executive Bill Ford signed a recent ad in The New York Times calling for the Biden administration to take action against climate change, along with Hollywood stars and environmental activists. The Ford company is also on the path to selling nothing but electric vehicles.

If the Sting Ray doesn't work out, an electric Mustang would be fine.

 

 

Honoring Henry Aaron's life

Henry Aaron's "homecoming" service Wednesday was one of those Atlanta moments when business, race, education, religion and politics intersect.

Unlike the memorial service the day before at the Braves ' suburban "Truist Park," no ballplayers participated in the event Wednesday at Friendship Baptist Church in southwest Atlanta.

Instead, former presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, civil rights leader and former Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young, former Major League Commissioner Bud Selig, Braves executive Terry McGuirk and TV sports announcer Bob Costas gave remembrances of Aaron, who died last week at age 86.

The most inspiring talk came from Quianna Lewis, a young woman currently working on a doctorate at Johns Hopkins after earning degrees at Fisk University and Yale thanks to a scholarship from Aaron's foundation.

She thanked Aaron on behalf of the hundreds of children he helped to achieve educations and successful careers.

Also noteworthy was Dr. Valerie Montgomery Rice, president and dean of Morehouse School of Medicine, who told of Aaron's $3 million gift to the school, in coordination with his wife, Billye Suber Aaron.

Young and Clinton in succeeding talks echoed Southern Protestant rhythms, the zest for storytelling shared by blacks and whites in the region.

The former mayor was amusing with his anecdote about white "country boys" watching Aaron in a parade down Spring Street in downtown Atlanta when the Braves first arrived in 1966, at the height of the civil rights movement.

Young recalled overhearing one of the group admit that Aaron should be allowed to buy a house anywhere he wanted in the then segregated city. Thus, Young said, Aaron changed Atlanta for the better even before playing a game.

While Carter in a Zoom appearance sounded frail, Clinton displayed vitality in his in-person address. Lord, that man can talk.

Clinton mentioned, a bit too many times, about Aaron's taking credit for Clinton winning Georgia in his first presidential campaign, when Aaron endorsed Clinton during an appearance with him at a suburban high school stadium.

At age 74, four years younger than Joe Biden, Clinton sounded rejuvenated by the Democrats' recent victories for the presidency and control of the Senate. As Clinton talked about his warm friendship with Aaron, he gave an image of the good, benevolent Clinton, not the self-destructive one.

While I like many others have long suffered from Clinton exhaustion, his speech made me wish that Biden would find a place for him in his administration. After all, John Kerry at age 77 is serving as the climate change adviser.

In his appreciation of Aaron as a ballplayer and humanitarian, Clinton spoke movingly of Aaron prevailing over the racial hatred he suffered growing up in segregated Mobile, Ala., and when approaching Babe Ruth's career home run record.

The service highlighted how much good Aaron did for Atlanta, the nation and the world after his stellar baseball career.

Unlike the students and others he helped, Aaron did it on his own, a poor black kid from the deep South who didn't have to be taught how to hit a baseball or love his neighbor. He was truly a natural, in baseball and in life.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sekou Smith's death brings home covid's tragic toll

I hardly knew Sekou Smith when he covered the Hawks for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

He wrote about the NBA team with authority, and his stories impressed me. A few times I said hello to him in the newsroom, warmed by his friendly spirit and electric smile. He was one of those people whose light always shines.

Sekou moved on from the AJC to NBA-TV and NBA.Com, drawing committed followers with his expert knowledge of the game.

Now, Sekou's gone at age 48, a victim of the covid virus. A man in his prime, a husband, and the father of three children.

That sadness strikes home, although I hardly knew him.

 

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Joan Didion and Rachel Kushner share year of the essay

Rachel Kushner was born in 1968, the year Joan Didion published "Slouching Toward Bethlehem."

Didion's collection is seen as a touchstone of that volatile year, which saw the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, violent protests of the Vietnam War, and the riot-torn Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

Kushner, the author of the acclaimed novels "The Mars Room," "The Flamethrowers" and "Telex From Cuba," grew up in an environment shaped by those tumultuous times.

Like Didion, she received a West Coast upbringing, primarily Californian, and the gift of keen observational powers. Unlike Didion's youth in a traditional middle-class home, Kushner was raised by free-spirited parents who followed the hippie ethos that Didion atomized.

Primarily known for her essays and non-fiction reporting, Didion also published two edgy, innovative novels that set the stage for Kushner's further examinations of the California counterculture's broken illusions.

Now, the writers are sharing the cultural spotlight with the publication of essay collections. The two books show the affinities and polarizations of two significant writers from different West Coast generations.

The 86-year-old Didion's "Let Me Tell You What I Mean" publishes previously uncollected "Points West" columns she wrote for the Saturday Evening Post, along with other material. She shared the column with her late husband, John Gregory Dunne.

While this sounds like the emptying of an aging writer's file for commercial gain, the collection has received strong reviews.

New Yorker writer Nathan Heller in a convoluted appreciation of Didion's career in the magazine's current issue, faintly praises the new collection in passing. The separate essays are a reversion from her "collage" technique in "Slouching Toward Bethlehem" and "The White Album" of stitching together several previous essays into a new piece, he says.

He also cites the irony of Didion, who opposes sentimentality in her work, becoming the object of popular commercial branding. Didion's "Blue Nights," her memoir about her wrenching grief over Dunne's unexpected death, softened her image and broadened her popular appeal.

Kushner's "The Hard Crowd," a collection of essays from 2000 to 2020, will showcase an aspect of her work overshadowed by her novels.

The book, coming in March, is also receiving a burst of attention. The New Yorker - there it is again - published "The Hard Crowd," Kushner's riveting memoir of growing up unfettered in a rough part of San Francisco.

Its harrowing look at urban squalor at the margins of American life contrasts with the beauty of the language. It's the best piece of writing the magazine has published recently.

Harper's magazine in its current issue offers another Kushner essay, about her dangerous participation in an illegal street motorcycle race in Baja, Mexico, in her younger days. The piece veers from horror and alarm to humor and exuberance.

While Didion foreshadowed Kushner's West Coast sensibility and tolerance for extreme experience, they differ in a crucial way.

Kushner revels in direct experience, while Didion stands at the edges, an unflinching observer.

 

Happiness is a warm puppy for Raphael Warnock, Democrats

Let's hear it for Alvin the Beagle, who made Snoopy proud in aiding Raphael Warnock's Senate victory in Georgia.

Alvin was the star of Warnock's endearing TV ads that effectively countered incumbent Kelly Loeffler's hysteric attacks about the pastor of Martin Luther King's Ebenezer Baptist Church.

Rivaling Naomi Klein's Intercept piece about the significance of Bernie Sanders' Inauguration Day mittens in analyzing pop political images, The New York Times' Shane Goldmacher Monday examined how Alvin came through for Warnock.

Mittens and beagles are the new progressive images as the GOP already plots to derail Joe Biden's administration.

Before the strident Loeffler unleashed her first scare ad, Warnock was shown embracing Alvin, assuring voters that he loves puppies.

Later, in one of the most effective ads in recent political campaigns, Warnock compares the GOP's racist and inflammatory claims to the dog's poop. The secondary message: Democrats unlike Republicans clean up after their pets and will also help the average Georgian.

In contrast to Alvin, GOP ads showed ranting Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi and AOC. Georgians liked Alvin's floppy ears better.

The victories of Warnock and fellow Georgia Democrat Jon Ossoff gave the Democrats control of the Senate, or at least we thought so until Miserly Mitch McConnell brought up his filibuster dead skunk.

Keep Alvin away from Mitch and the other Republicans. They like Rotweilers.

I liked the Alvin ads, and their composition is a legitimate news story. Yet, as one who cut his teeth on Theodore White, Haynes Johnson and Timothy Crouse's "The Boys on the Bus," I shook my head reading it, over the decline of American political discourse.

One question the New York Times piece didn't cover: Was Alvin named for the chipmunk?

 

 

 

 

Farewell, Henry Aaron

On a gloomy Friday morning, the news arrived that Henry Aaron was gone.

Following the deaths of several Hall of Fame players, the greatest of them all died at age 86.

Aaron and other black players in the generation following Jackie Robinson showed tremendous courage as well.

Growing up in the brutally segregated Mobile, Ala., Aaron first gained national stardom with the Milwaukee Braves, leading the team to a World Series victory over the New York Yankees and winning the Most Valuable Player award in 1957.

After the team moved to Atlanta, Aaron achieved his greatest triumph, breaking Babe Ruth's venerated career home run record, withstanding intense racial opposition. His accomplishment on April 8, 1974, at old Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium marked Atlanta's coming of age as a major city and the South's fragile racial progress.

He was a great man as well as a great ballplayer. His swing was unforgettable, and so was his smile.

 

 

 

 

Farewell, Don Sutton

Don Sutton was the voice of lazy summertime afternoons in Atlanta.

Broadcasting Braves games on the radio, the 324-game winner and Hall of Fame pitcher spoke with authority about his craft. Like legendary baseball announcers from the past, the Alabama native also seemed like a member of the family or a trusted old friend.

Mostly remembered as a gritty, indomitable starter for the Los Angeles Dodgers, the longtime Braves broadcaster died Monday night of cancer at his home in California at age 75. He also pitched for the Astros, Brewers, Athletics and Angels, getting hitters out with guile and guts more than overpowering fastballs.

While he never pitched for the Braves, Sutton became a team icon as a broadcaster. He joined the beloved team of Ernie Johnson Sr., Skip Caray and Pete Van Wieren, who narrated the Braves' rise from their forlorn days on Ted Turner's Channel 17 to their glory years as the National League's top franchise. Sutton was the last surviving member of the team.

In a Fox Sports corporate shakeup, Sutton was banished from TV to radio, where he found his true metier. He was a throwback to the old-time radio voices who brought baseball into American homes before the television era. In contrast to football and basketball, baseball is a radio game. Along with imparting baseball lessons, Sutton painted vivid pictures of a game's action.

From his 23-year career as a pitching craftsman, Sutton drew upon a deep knowledge of baseball culture, how the players experienced the long season, the intricacies of the game, the drama of each inning.

As the AJC's Mark Bradley said in a tribute Wednesday, listeners always learned something from Sutton. The old Dodger also gave them baseball poetry.

 

 

Joe Biden begins a new American chapter

After all of these years, I most remember the inauguration of John F. Kennedy.

Our class at Glasgow Elementary School in Baton Rouge, La., watched the event on television, hearing our new leader with his Boston accent herald the rise of a new generation with the stirring words, "And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country."

Kennedy was 43 years old, taking over from the aged Republican Dwight Eisenhower.  Our new president, Joe Biden, is 78, a member of a generation that has been in power in Washington for three decades.

Yet, after the devastation of the Trump years, today feels like a new beginning for the country.

Kamala Harris, our new vice president, sets a historic legacy and holds the standard for a new America.

Biden has announced an ambitious agenda to tackle problems neglected during years of stalemate.

The times are daunting, with the country torn by political turmoil and losing thousands a day to the Covid epidemic. 

After many years of joy and sorrow, Joe Biden's hour has come. Like Kennedy, he's uplifted by his Irish heritage and Catholic faith. As on that bitterly cold day in 1961, the nation begins a new chapter.

 

F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby" enters public domain

F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby" is blossoming with new editions following the expiration of the classic novel's copyright on Jan. 1.

Along with the numerous republications of the work published in 1925 - along with Virginia Woolf's "Mrs. Dalloway" - author Michael Farris Smith has published "Nick," a prequel exploring the life of narrator Nick Carraway before he moved next door to the eponymous Jay Gatsby's Long Island mansion.

"The Great Gatsby" details Gatsby's quixotic and tragic effort to win the love of the entitled Daisy Buchanan through an invented past and fraudulently obtained wealth. Carraway observes Gatsby's rise and fall, with witty and pointed commentary about Gatsby's lavish life and the other characters. He comes to see Gatsby as a heroic tragic hero, and Daisy and her repellent husband Tom as soul-less, materialistic monsters.

The novel's entering the public domain has also fostered reappraisals, including a recent piece by New York Times literary critic Parul Sehgal that questions whether the novel is really that great. Like other writers of his era, Fitzgerald has been criticized over his negative depictions of women and anti-semitic characterizations.

Similar to J.D. Salinger's "A Catcher in the Rye," Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby" is praised for its distinctive first-person voice, rather than the complexity of its characters and plot.

A commercial failure when first published although praised by T.S. Eliot as a major advance in American fiction,  "The Great Gatsby" can be read in one sitting. Fitzgerald's language, filtered through Carraway's observations, has a poetic precision in which every word matters.

The story of Gatsby's doomed love for Daisy Buchanan skewers the excesses of American capitalism in the "Roaring '20s," before the stock market crash that ushered in the Depression. Many of the passages, including the famous ending about "the dark fields of the republic," live on in the cultural memory.

New York Times critic Wesley Morris in an introduction to one of the new editions says rereading the book gave him a fresh appreciation of Fitzgerald's understanding of how Americans constantly reinvent themselves.

But I don't believe I'll return to "The Great Gatsby." The book glows in my memory, Fitzgerald's words forever bright.

 

 

 

U.S. remains divided over Martin Luther King's dream

On Martin Luther King's holiday, I think about the contrast between his March on Washington and the recent mob invasion of the U.S. Capitol.

On that sweltering day in August 1963, King gave his "I Have a Dream" speech to 250,000 mostly black citizens gathered on the National Mall before the Lincoln Memorial.

The nonviolent "march for jobs and freedom" sought equal rights for the country's black citizens. King's vision of racial unity and economic opportunity inspired landmark voting rights and civil rights legislation.

Violence and conflict during the 1960s gave the counterpoint to King's message.

John F. Kennedy was killed in Dallas months after King's eloquent appeal. Lyndon Johnson, the champion of civil rights legislation, saw his presidency destroyed by his escalation of the Vietnam War.

After expanding his message to oppose the war, King was killed by a right-wing assassin in 1968. Soon after, Robert Kennedy was murdered. The 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago disintegrated into rioting, leading to the election of Richard Nixon.

On Jan. 6, of this year Trump in a crude divergence from King's speech exhorted his followers gathered in Washington to march to the Capitol and disrupt the certification of Joe Biden's election as president.

Answering Trump's incitement to violence, the white supremacist mob invaded the capitol, threatening the lives of Vice President Pence, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and members of Congress. Five people, including a Capitol police officer, were killed.

As Trump slinks away, impeached for a second time, he leaves Washington an armed camp for Biden's inauguration. Presidential inaugurations through the years have celebrated the country's open democratic society and peaceful transfer of power.

This week's presence of troops recalls Lincoln's first inauguration on the cusp of the Civil War. A century after the war's end, and the abolition of slavery, King called for the country to fulfill the promise of full citizenship for black citizens.

Trump and the GOP have sought to cripple the racial progress King inspired. After the destructive Trump years, Biden promises to restore America's commitment to justice and equality.

The Jan. 6 violence and presence of armed troops in the nation's capital expose a vast chasm in fulfilling King's dream.