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Thursday, April 21, 2011

ABC "Made in America" analysis

The ABC "Made in America" series of segments indeed made for good TV - challenging Smithsonian about its gift shop sourcing, daring an average American household to turn its possessions out for inspection, and collaring Everyman on the street daring them to strip down to American-made-only clothing if any right there in front of their candid cameras and all turning up at the short end.


However I'm not sure that I care too much for their in-your-face journalism.


Can we now turn the tables on them and ask them:



  • Diane Sawyer - what is the car you drive? your desk, your computer where were they made? your roofing, carpetting, at home... give us an accounting! where was the scarf you wore made? the suit? the jewelry? the perfume, the lipstick?

  • David Muir - hey is that name your own? or is it French? Scotch? and the suits you wear? the shoes? the car?


  • And ABC - could we please find out how local your suppliers are?

It would be so much better if they would just do their real job as journalists. There are so many layers to this story that I wish they would spend the remaining segments on addressing those layers: for e.g.



  • could they probe beyond the consumer level; is consumption at the business consumption level also all non-American? planes, trains, ships, tractors, elevators? perhaps we are ceding one type of production to the world, just so that we focus on where our country's value-add is greatest - is there enough mark-up and volume there in handmade furniture to keep all our demographics gainfully employed? if so we should all become hand-crafting carpenters and get the chinese out of the business of cheap machine made furniture, if not would we be better off learning the truth and redirecting our energies?

  • could they go beyond why America consumes so much more of goods produced outside but why does America consume so much at all? can we learn to live less largely, and within our means?

And then in this interconnected day and age, shouldn't we celebrate our so-very-healthy diversity of tastes and interests? granted much of the diversity is motivated by bargain-hunting, but some of it reflects our complete open-mindedness; I so love it when I walk into a World Market's store and can't tell whether I'm in my native India, or the Fisherman's Wharf at San Francisco where I first ran into one. And that is something that should be celebrated, something that the world, China, India, Brazil can emulate - for if they followed our lead and shut their markets to the rest of the world and to us, the whole world will very soon hear the giant sucking sound that Ross Perot (I never thought I'd be taking his name this reverentially!) talked about nearly 20 years ago!

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Ai Weiwei - Julian Assange deja vu??

I agree with Rushdie's observation, that artists even in free societies risk derision when they perform a public role. It seems that it is not just artists, it's anyone who tries to live an authentic life could be in such danger. Salman Rushdie writing in NYT yesterday in a piece titled Dangerous Arts tells about the experience of artists in protesting against public authorities. And as he rightly points out, this is something that happens in free societies as much as in repressed ones. So may be free societies need to set a better example?
Just read Rushdie's account of the treament meted out to Mr. Ai Weiwei.
"The authorities have embarrassed and harassed him before, but now they have gone on a dangerous new offensive.
On April 4, Mr. Ai was arrested by the Chinese authorities as he tried to board a plane to Hong Kong. His studio was raided and computers and other items were removed. Since then the regime has allowed hints of his “crimes” — tax evasion, pornography — to be published. These accusations are not credible to those who know him. It seems the regime, irritated by the outspokenness of its most celebrated art export, whose renown has protected him up to now, has decided to silence him in the most brutal fashion. "
If it isn't almost to the last line taken from the West's playbook on Julian Assange, I don't know what else is!!!
I think the only thing left for us to do is to slap an Intellectual Property lawsuit on the Chinese for stealing our tactics on dealing with artists, bohemians and now plain old database engineers who hold a mirror to our faces and dare to spill the truth!