Is it just me, or is anyone else totally annoyed by the fact General Motors continues to advertise while in the throws of unwinding decades of weak management, failed labor relations and poor product quality?

First it was rally caps and now its reinvention?  Common people, cheese and rice! 

Last November, Rick Wagoner sat before the Senate outlining his plan and requesting over $20 billion in funding in different forms that GM would begin repaying in 2011.  Shortly after we saw television advertising that asked, "Do you know what America needs right now?  America needs a comeback.  So lets put on our rally caps." 

RALLY CAPS!?!?!?!?

Now that the money is GONE and the company is entering bankruptcy, and its estimated taxpayers will have to fund another $50 billion to get them through, General Motors has decided to run more television advertising announcing their reinvention. 

Frankly, the script of the commercial is exactly what Wagoner said in his Senate testimony.  Fewer brands, better cost structure, more "green" technologies...

WHAT ABOUT BETTER CARS!?!?!?        

I kind of get the argument you could imagine being made inside the halls at GM about why they need to advertise - I'm sure there were discussions about how this mass reach medium could help tell their story to America, about how an emotional stand could help employee morale.  About how they can't disappear now because if business slows further, the problem will be bigger.

I don't want a Total Confidence ownership plan in case I lose my job.  I want total confidence that I'm buying a great product from a company that's not going away.

Bankruptcy may be fast as those things go.  And I'm sure that GM will cut brands, close dealerships and come to some terms with unions about costs.

But new cars - the ones that America wants - are years away.

Don't tell me you're reinventing, just reinvent!  And I can't wait for the day when the product and company and cost structure and union relationships and politics are all singularly focused on one thing - making something that people have to have...because then they will.