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June 4, 2005
What Has She Been Drinking?
First Eason Jordan, then Linda Foley, now the President and CEO of PepsiCo?
In her commencement address to the graduates of Columbia Business School this past May 15, Indra Nooyi accused the United States of giving the finger to the rest of the world.
she said
Here's what she said:
This analogy of the five fingers as the five major continents leaves the long, middle finger for North America, and, in particular, The United States. As the longest of the fingers, it really stands out. The middle finger anchors every function that the hand performs and is the key to all of the fingers working together efficiently and effectively. This is a really good thing, and has given the U.S. a leg-up in global business since the end of World War I.However, if used inappropriately – just like the U.S. itself - the middle finger can convey a negative message and get us in trouble. You know what I’m talking about. In fact, I suspect you’re hoping that I’ll demonstrate what I mean. And trust me, I’m not looking for volunteers to model.
Discretion being the better part of valor...I think I’ll pass.
What is most crucial to my analogy of the five fingers as the five major continents, is that each of us in the U.S. – the long middle finger – must be careful that when we extend our arm in either a business or political sense, we take pains to assure we are giving a hand...not the finger. Sometimes this is very difficult. Because the U.S. – the middle finger – sticks out so much, we can send the wrong message unintentionally.
Unfortunately, I think this is how the rest of the world looks at the U.S. right now. Not as part of the hand – giving strength and purpose to the rest of the fingers – but, instead, scratching our nose and sending a far different signal.
Yeah? Well, the way I look at you, Ms Nooyi, is that you're nuts. This is your idea of a commencement address?
More to the point, how do people like this rise to the top? Does no one ever stop and say, "so-in-so is really nuts!" There is no way that this the whacko statements we have heard from Nooyi, Eason Jordan, and Linda Foley came out of the blue. They've said this stuff before.
Scott Johnson of Powerline posted PepsiCo's response, which you can read on his Weekly Standard article. Hint; it's not convincing.
Ms Nooyi has also issued one of those "I'm sorry but my remarks were misconstrued" psuedoapologies. You can also read it in the Weekly Standard piece. She says that she is "deeply sorry for offending anyone", but doesn't really take back what she said. At least that's how I read it.
Apparently I'm a bit behind on this one because as I check around I see a lot of other folks have been blogging on it also, including Michelle Malkin, Powerline, and Hugh Hewitt. Well that's what happens when you spend your time setting up a few new blogs. But then again, that's the purpose of blogs, to keep the stories alive that the msm despirately want to ignore.
Am I going to have to give up on Pepsi now?
Posted by Tom at June 4, 2005 2:27 PM
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