Dear Virginia: Why Santa can’t bail out the auto industry

6 comments November 18th, 2008

Dear Virginia:

You’ve asked why can’t Santa bail out the auto industry.

Being such a smart 8-year-old, you already know that Santa has said he’ll bail out the banks.

So let me tell you the difference between the auto industry and the banking industry, and why Santa’s helpers (we call them “legislators”) are having a tough time giving a bag of money to carmakers.

It comes down to what the good little girls and boys in the United States are thinking.

The good little girls and boys can’t put a bad-man face on the banks, like they can with the Big Three automakers. There are just too many banks, all with somebody in charge, that are having trouble. And they don’t know those people like they know the name of Robert Lutz. He’s in charge at General Motors, the big American carmaker, and he used to be a big wig at Chrysler, the littlest of the U.S. carmakers.

Plus, while the good little girls and boys around here know that bank presidents make a lot of money, they know that the tellers and the clerks they see when they go to the bank don’t.

That’s different with the carmakers. Good little girls and boys who know someone who works at a car factory know they make a lot of money compared with what many of their other friends are making.

So, Santa’s helpers can’t very well tell all of us that they’re going to give money to your neighbor, who makes more money than your parents, but your parents aren’t going to get any.

That’s not fair, is it Virginia?

Deja vu: Emily revisits Ellen, Thanksgiving parade

Add comment November 18th, 2008

Is it “Groundhog Day” again?

No, it just seems that Emily Bear, Rockford’s pint-sized piano prodigy, is redoing what she did a year ago around Thanksgiving time in a high-profile, Bill Murray kind of way.

First, Bear’s fourth appearance on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show” aired Monday. Bear’s second appearance was last November.

This time around, the 7-year-old talked about having a broken nose last summer and played a classical number she wrote to celebrate DeGeneres’ wedding, “Once Upon a Wish.” The song is one of 26 Emily has penned. Ellen told Emily: “You are a special, special girl. I love you. I do.” And so does everyone else, judging by the comments on the TV show’s Web site.

Emily also will have another role in this year’s McDonald’s Thanksgiving Parade, the 75th annual, on State Street in Chicago.

Emily and Ronald McDonald will crank a large key to start an ice-skating princess inside the McCafe Wonderland Snow Globe. Her piece, “Christmas Bells,” will play as that parade entry winds through the route. Another piece she wrote, “Giving,” will play with another unit, the Ronald McDonald House Charities Care Mobile entry. Emily’s pieces will be heard by parade spectators who hear her crank the key, along with 1.5 million TV viewers, Julie Sestan, a spokeswoman for the parade said in an e-mail.

What’s Emily think about that? “I love it,” she said. “It makes me feel good. I like to touch people (with my music).”

Last year, Emily prerecorded and composed the parade’s opening number, “Waterlights.”

The parade airs from 8 to 11 a.m. Nov. 27 on WGN (Comcast 18).