Oh brother. The government has taken over General Motors.

Or should I say, Oh Big Brother?

The largest car company in America, the second largest car company in the world, is now owned by We The People, after Uncle Sam assumed a 60 percent equity share this week as part of GM's bankruptcy restructuring.

Government Motors.

The phrase "As American as baseball, apple pie and Chevrolet" now takes on deeper meaning.

The good news: Now we all qualify for the friends and family discount.

The bad news: Now we all qualify for the friends and family discount.

GM's new ad campaign: "Buy From Us — Or We'll Raise Taxes."

New operating hours will be Monday through Friday, 8 to 5; closed weekends and on all national holidays. (And a four-day workweek is under consideration.)

And then there's the August recess.

The service department will get right on your problem, as soon as they finish filling the potholes and processing those passport applications.

Financing? No problem. Just as soon as the FBI concludes its background check.

The government's foray into the automobile industry does seem like perfect timing now that Joe Biden needs something to do.

Or does the new vice president not look exactly like someone about to ask, "What do we have to do so you can drive this baby home today?"

Biden could be the face of GM, like Khrushchev was the face of the Lada.

Still, as good as this is for Joe Biden, does anyone else see this arrangement as weird?

Isn't the government supposed to buy black SUVs? Not sell them?

For a century, ever since it began in 1908 in Detroit with a product line that included the Buick, the Oldsmobile and, in 1909 the Cadillac, General Motors represented everything right about independent American capitalism.

Its signature model, the Chevrolet, came along in 1912 when William C. Durant, the founder of GM, secured the rights to a car designed and manufactured by one Louis-Joseph Chevrolet, a French immigrant, race-car driver (he drove a Buick for Mr. Durant in the first-ever Indianapolis 500 in 1911) and budding mechanical genius.

Durant liked the unique straight-six engine the Frenchman had created and he also liked the way Chevrolet — pronounced Chev-ro-lay (one Web site says it roughly translates to "goat's milk" in French) — rolled off the tongue.

But business being business, conflict wasn't far away. Durant and Chevrolet (the person) disagreed over how Chevrolet (the car) should be packaged and marketed.