Mr. Earl at GM

By ice rivers

Sun, 28 May 2017

742 reads

1 comments

Earl Carroll was the lead singer for the Cadillacs and responsible for a great rhytm and blues line..."They used to call me Speedoo but my real name is Mr. Earl".

Ironic that the main designer for GM cars, including Cadillacs, in the 1950's was Harley Earl who was never called Harley by his subordinates only Mr. Earl. Mr. Earl himself used to drive a Cadillac but stopped driving one after he designed a Cadillac like model for Buick who because of declining sales wanted a Buick that looked like a Cadillac....

Up until he designed the LeSabre, Mr Earl had always driven a Cadillac like all of the top executives at GM at the time.

Ultimately Mr. Earl switched and drove a LeSabre for the rest of his career at GM.

Not only is a LeSabre the car driven by Mr. Earl, it is also the last name of a character in Breakfast of Champions, a novel by Kurt Vonnegut.

I always encourage everone to read this book to strengthen the concept that the only ultimate power in this universe belongs to the reader while they are reading like you are right now as these very words that stay appear in your mind momentarily for you to do with what you will.

In the book, Dwayne Hoover is going insane and his journey is being observed by science fiction writer Kilgore Trout.

Dwayne Hoover gets more and more insane as the book progresses. He terrifies his employee at the Pontiac agency, Harry LeSabre, by criticizing his clothes.

LeSabre is afraid Hoover has discovered that he is a closet transexual. Then he gets in a fight with his mistress and secretary, Francine Pefko because he accuses her of asking him to buy her a Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise.

.And so on........

So in the name of continuity, my next few paragraphs should be about Hoover, closet transexuality, insanity, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Pontiacs or people who criticize each other's clothes.

Don't bet on it.

Like the cars of the past, I'm gonna wrap it up in chrome.

In a culture based upon symbolism, calculation begins as statistical and devolves into statustical.

Narcissim is always built on the vanity of small differences and the assignment of blame.

Differentiation is a quotient of division.

Divide and conquer is the key.

Within GM in the day, Pontiac, Buick, Chevrolet, Oldsmobile and Cadillac were all referred to as divisions. Within the divisions, there were model lines.
Take Pontiac for example. For awhile Bonneville was the top model line. Was it better to buy a top of the line Bonneville or a bottom of the line Caddy?

A lot of it had to do with chrome.

Why not, we're all a product of our chromosones. Decisions, decisions decisions.

Decisions are all about differentiation and differentiation is all about division.

So say Mr. Earl