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Friday, January 03, 2003 |
Chris Hitchens on Mother Teresa. [religion] Why Mother Teresa Should not be a Saint -- Christopher Hitchens on the canonization of Mother Teresa ... 'I discovered that she had taken money from rich dictators like the Duvalier gang in Haiti, had been a friend of poverty rather than a friend of the poor, had never given any account of the huge sums of money donated to her, had railed against birth-control in the most overpopulated city on the planet and had been the spokeswoman for the most extreme dogmas of religious fundamentalism. Actually, it's boasting to say that I "discovered" any of this. It was all there in plain sight for anyone to notice. But in the age of celebrity, nobody had troubled to ask if such a global reputation was truly earned or was simply the result of brilliant public relations.' [LinkMachineGo]
7:12:03 PM Permalink
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You are now free to lie about the country.
Nike is defending its sacred right, as an American company, to lie about shit.
[The Doc Searls Weblog]
While Nike was conducting a huge and expensive PR blitz to tell people that it had cleaned up its subcontractors' sweatshop labor practices, an alert consumer advocate and activist in California named Marc Kasky caught them in what he alleges are a number of specific deceptions. Citing a California law that forbids corporations from intentionally deceiving people in their commercial statements, Kasky sued the multi-billion-dollar corporation.
Instead of refuting Kasky's charge by proving in court that they didn't lie, however, Nike instead chose to argue that corporations should enjoy the same "free speech" right to deceive that individual human citizens have in their personal lives. If people have the constitutionally protected right to say, "The check is in the mail," or, "That looks great on you," then, Nike's reasoning goes, a corporation should have the same right to say whatever they want in their corporate PR campaigns.
2:15:02 PM Permalink
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© Copyright 2004 Steve Michel.
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