Ungratefulness Runs Deep

Dear General Motors,

I hope you are happy with the 50 billion dollars that I and my friends gave you a few years ago.

Are you enjoying it? Do you have nice offices? Have you been out to a few yummy dinners recently? Are your kids nicely dressed?

That's great. I'd hate to see you unhappy or uncomfortable.

Just one thing. I noticed in the newspaper the other day that you had a 3 billion dollar contract for media that you did not give to an American company. Funny that there is not an American company you could use. I always thought we had a pretty good advertising industry here in the USA.

Just a comment here -- it doesn't look good. There are a lot of people who didn't get bailed out by me and my friends in 2008, and they still don't have jobs. It would have been nice if you placed the contract here.

You could have said, "We are very sensitive to the pain of so many Americans during the ongoing recession. We are bringing 3 billion in business back to the US in the hope that this will put some of our deserving fellow citizens back to work." Even if the reality is that much of the 3 billion will be spent elsewhere and the contract would only create one more job, every job is valuable these days. And it would look so much better to the kind, generous people whose money you are currently living on.

People less magnanimous than myself might even say that GM is unwilling to do for us what they asked us to do for them -- a little sacrifice for the good of all. They might consider this a slap in the face by an arrogant, clueless, unappreciative corporation. That would be unfortunate for you.

People will remember how much money we gave you. And we will remember what you did with it. Ungratefulness runs deep.