Thursday, December 11, 2008

The Car Czar?

http://www.fortunecity.com/victorian/hornton/890/LAsttsar.html


What's with naming a Car Czar?


The last Czar was Nicholas II (Nicholas Alexandrovich Romanov);


Nicholas II, his wife, his son, his four daughters, the family's medical doctor, his personal servant, the Empress' chambermaid and the family's cook were all murdered in the same room by the Bolsheviks on the night of 17 July 1918. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_II_of_Russia


The next Mock-Czar was the Drug Czar in the United States of America:


The term Drug Czar is a name for the person who directs drug-control policies in the United States. The title was first published in a 1982 news story by United Press International which reported that “Senators... voted 62-34 to establish a ‘drug czar’ who would have overall responsibility for U.S. drug policy.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_Czar


We've reached a point in the back and forth (between Congress and the U.S. Auto Giants) negotiations for a Bail-Out for the Big Three (GM, Ford, and Chrysler), that a government appointed bureaucrat will be assigned to oversee the administration of the Billions doled out by the U.S. Treasury. They've chosen to call him the Car Czar.
Why would they name him or her, Czar?
Why not Car Kaiser? It rhymes!
Or, perhaps Car Caesar? It's Latin!
Why Car Czar?
I wonder if there's something cryptic or subliminal in using a Russian word to refer to a government administrator in the U.S.? Would Putin or Gorbachev be flattered by such an act?
It baffles me when an extinct title is used in our great democracy to describe a government employee's duties.; There's something is fundamentally wrong with this.
When they name this official called the Car Czar, keep your eyes on the comrades in the Kremlin (Capitol Hill).
Arsenio.