Helpful hints to Detroit’s Big Three execs now pleading their case in Washington:

Convert the walls lining Mahogany Row to sheetrock. Do you or don’t you want to show shareholders and employees that management “gets it”?

Swallow that overweening pride of yours and place “For a Rainy Day” canisters at the end of every row of seats at this week’s D.C. hearings. They’ll have to admit you’re really trying.

Throw daily parties on your assembly lines and lubricate with free booze; workers have a high old time, production slows to a crawl, and finally — finally! — supply starts matching demand.

Playing the sympathy card is way overdue: blame your haywire financial situation on a C.F.O. with advanced A.D.D. and say the bastard hid it for years.

Using the standard per-vehicle estimate of 10,000 miles annually, add up the miles not driven and fuel not consumed by all your unsold 2008 units — millions of gallons, huge energy-saving story: “We’re doing our part!”

Offer free comprehensive health care with every new-vehicle purchase. Need for Scandinavian or U.K. citizenship goes in the fine print. Come on, who has time these days to read fine print?

If the billions of bucks in bailout loans come through, use the money creatively: donate half a billion bucks to every U.S. senator and sit back as laws banning fuel-efficient cars sail right through. Pressure’s off!

Cash in on the value of empty symbolism: with the word “Detroit” such heap bad karma, shift corporate H.Q. to sweet, green, tree-hugging Vermont and get an instant image up bounce.

Run 2008 Annual Report sales charts upside-down. If anybody quibbles, claim it was a misprint and scapegoat the graphic artist.

Bruce McCall, a humorist, is a regular contributor to The New Yorker and Vanity Fair. He is the author of “All Meat Looks Like South America: The World of Bruce McCall” and “Zany Afternoons.”

A startled Sarah Palin looks up from her chores. (Flickr: J. Medkeff)

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the Republican vice-presidential nominee, is busy vacuuming the house and can’t hear the many interview requests from national media sources that have poured in since her surprise selection, a McCain campaign spokesperson explained today.

“The governoress will be too preoccupied with family values-type activities to meet with reporters in print or on TV,” he continued. “Uh-oh, she just stopped vacuuming and now she’s darning all the kids’ socks — it’s back to school time, you know.”

Though her veepship has a sewing machine, washer/dryer and bake oven on her campaign plane, she still needs every minute to mother her brood, fix her hubby’s three squares a day and keep her nails looking nice, explains the McCain camp.

Her gubernatorial duties are being temporarily handled by the cleaning lady — “a dead ringer,” according to Palin intimates, “with a natural kind of knack for attending banquets and signing away state oil reserves to private industry.”

Ms. Palin’s ostensibly narrow experience in governance and national and international affairs is being brushed off by GOP officials, partly because she is “a phenomenally fast learner.”

She can reportedly already name the capitals of many U.S. states — except for Oregon, New Hampshire and Indiana. “Nobody except a pro gets those,” notes one coach. For this reason she is unafraid of grillings by what one Republican observer called “the muttering mob of mealy-mouthed media moguls.”

You should see her watching ‘Jeopardy,’” the observer adds. “Bam! Sarah has the question almost before Alex Trebek has the answer. And some of the questions are correct!”

McCain campaign officials now predict that Ms. Palin will be available for all interviews by Jan. 17, 2009, Inauguration Day in Washington.

“I’ll be there in a flash,” she has been quoted as promising. “Washington is one of my favorite places. Particularly Seattle.”

Bruce McCall, a humorist, is a regular contributor to The New Yorker and Vanity Fair. He is the author of “All Meat Looks Like South America: The World of Bruce McCall” and “Zany Afternoons.”

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) (Flickr, Twinkletoez)

Sen. John McCain, the presumed Republican presidential nominee, made a dramatic surprise appearance tonight at the Democratic National Convention in Denver. Constant aide Sen. Joe Lieberman was at his heels as usual, but was unable to catch the Arizona Republican before he strode to the podium for what he evidently thought was his official acceptance of the GOP nomination.

The chorus of lusty boos from a l00 percent Democratic gathering failed to faze the longtime Washington insider and constant companion of Arizona’s richest beer heiress.

“This mood of disunity I feel here on this podium,” he declared, “is the very thing I intend to change by bringing together the energy cartel, the lumber barons, strip mining, Halliburton Inc., Big Pharma, religious fanatics and our dead Iraq heroes into a movement that will crush such dissent like a bug.

“Tonight, ” he continued, “I vow to all of you to promise a comprehensive package of pledges that will guarantee every American the hope of aspirations I am sworn to enumerate as not just a wish list, but an actual dream.

“Our soon-to-be-former president has asked me to read his personal message to this entire convention, but I left it on the plane. Anyway, it was something about staying the course — I didn’t have time to read the whole thing.”

Informed that he had crashed a Democratic convention, McCain seemed initially startled but made a quick recovery. “Why do you think they call me a maverick?,” he quipped.

Bruce McCall, a humorist, is a regular contributor to The New Yorker and Vanity Fair. He is the author of “All Meat Looks Like South America: The World of Bruce McCall” and “Zany Afternoons.”