General Motors gets a little more specific

Yesterday was sad. GM announced it plans on cutting 21,000 jobs and four brands in an attempt dredge some profitability out of the murky waters of near-bankruptcy. Soon, we’ll also be sorrowfully waving bye-bye to Pontiac, Saturn, Saab and Hummer.

This really marks the end for those dedicated few still waiting for the release of a new Pontiac Aztek. And, with the phase-out of Hummer, experts are estimating that it will now be 143 percent harder to automatically identify a douchebag.

“Without Hummers, douchebags may be forced to drive ‘normal people’ cars — hiding themselves from the untrained eye,” said David Baker, the head of the automotive division of The Douche Institute — a not-for-profit that works to educate the public about how to identify and avoid a douchebag. “But the period of blending in won’t be long. You can never underestimate the doucheyness of these douchebags. The Hummer may be gone, but they’ll find another vehicle to turn into a lighthouse for douchebags and humongous fucking tools everywhere.”

The loss of the Saab brand also pangs my heart a bit. Where are the pretentious going to put their “You must be Categorically Impaired” bumper stickers? Or their “Fair Trade or NO Trade” stickers? What will become of all the unstuck “Gore/Leibermann 2000” and “My other car is a compost-and-hummus-burning motorized unicycle” bumper stickers? I guess they’ll all have to be framed and hung over the stacks of Morrissey, Radiohead and Dave Matthews Band CDs, or encased in the glass coffee tables that hold America’s stacks of McSweeney’s Quarterlies.