It is a measure of the seriousness of our global credit crisis that the possible failure of the American automobile industry is only the second-biggest business story these days. It is incomprehensible that General Motors, which at the close of trading yesterday had a market capitalization of a relatively paltry $1.89 billion, could be purchased outright by Bill Gates with the change that spills from his pockets when he trades pants for pajamas in the evening. There is much debate about whether the federal government should rescue the industry, and here are a couple of things worth reading: This piece from Slate makes the case that a bankruptcy court-supervised reorganization of GM (which I’ve thought made sense) would be a mistake. And this blog entry from a fellow who calls himself “The Autoextremist” couches the matter in vivid, urgent terms.

If you have an appetite for food writing (sorry, couldn’t resist), then you know about Calvin Trillin, the dean of the literary food set. If you need evidence of his gift, read this piece from New Yorker, in which Trillin explains how an unknown, open-only-on-Saturday barbecue eatery in rural Texas was named the best such joint in the state by Texas Monthly magazine. By the time I got to the passage in the article where Trillin explains the magazine editor’s decision that a rewrite was in order of the reviewer’s rhapsodic declaration that “the butt was tender and yielding,” I was howling with laughter. This is as good as it gets when the topic is food. In fact, it’s just about as good as it gets, period.

There is much talk about the decline of the labor movement in recent years, but you can’t prove it by a fellow named Mike Greenman. He’s at the mercy of a particularly ruthless bargaining group, as Onion Network News explains in this video report. As unions go, this one could teach the Teamsters something about toughness.

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