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The recent controversy in November and December of 2008 which resurfaced in February 2009 over bridge loans to sustain the US auto industry through a declining market has been framed in two basic ways, and sometimes together: 1) That the Detroit Three companies (General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler) do not build cars that people want to buy, and 2) that bad management in conjunction with an unreasonable union has made them unprofitable, now and in the future. Both arguments lack factual veracity, and just as importantly, this media misdirection conceals larger issues of global capital and class struggle behind the battle over bridge loans to the Detroit Three. Allegedly, people do not want to buy US cars because of poor quality and undesirable features. In reality, market share during the period of greatest public controversy was: GM with 22.3%, Toyota 16.7, Ford 15.0, Chrysler 11.0, Honda 10.8, Nissan 7.2, and Hyundai 3.0 (Tierney, Snell, and Hoffman 2009). The fisrt quarter sales report from GM (McDonald 2009) showed that key new models were all up over the previous year for an increase of 23% in retail car sales and a 6% increase in crossover sales. GM total sales were down 51% as a result of a 75% decline in fleet sales, although restricting fleet sales was mostly intentional. In contrast, Toyota retail car sales declined by 31.7% in the same period (Iliffe-Moon and Zeigler 2009), and Honda car sales declined by 35.4% (Honda Press Release 2009). In 2008, Ford actually improved its market share by .7%, even as the overall market declined by nearly 20% (Snavely 2009). This downturn prompted Toyota to ask the Japanese government for $2 billion for its financial unit (Walsh 2009) which ran out of cash at the end of the year. Regarding quality, the industry standard Harbour Report North America (2008) concludes, as well as various car magazines and the problematic but influential (see Karesh 2007, 2006; Lundskow 2008) Consumer Reports (Editors 2008), that the Detroit Three have reached parity in many segments and lead in some. Like their employers, the United Auto Workers (UAW) face harsh attacks from a Congressional contingent led by Senators Richard Shelby and Jeff Sessions of Alabama and Mitch McConnell of Kentucky (Spangler 2008), as well as Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee and University of Maryland professor Peter Morici (2008). Representing the Southern corridor of non-union Japanese, German, and Korean facilities located in Alabama, Kentucky, Tennessee, South Carolina, and Mississippi, they added mandates to President Bush’s bridge loans in December 2008 that required GM and Chrysler to reduce employee and retiree healthcare and retirement benefits by half, and wages by 25% beyond the reduction in the new contract agreement that would have started in 2009 (Merx 2008). It also prohibited the UAW from striking, else the immediate recall of all loans (Hyde and Higgins 2009). Now in effect after the bankruptcy proceedings these reductions and prohibitions match the wages, benefits, and terms of their non-union counterparts in the Southern corridor. Although President Obama’s auto task force maintained these The Workers May Yet Unite: Media Misdirection Versus The Political and Cultural Economy of the US Auto Industry and Worker Attitudes