Posted on 05/18/2005 11:26:47 AM PDT by 68skylark
Pepsico has now released a copy of the speech from the Columbia Business School greaduation. (This is the speech by their president, Indra Nooyi, which some have claimed to be straongly anti-American.)
http://www.pepsico.com/Speech-ColumbiaBusinessSchool.pdf
For those of you who haven't been following this in the last few days, the good folks at Powerline have been all over it.
The rest of the world does not understand what the middle finger means.
No Pepsi. Coke.
So let me get this straight: We should not be making fun of HOLES IN THE FLOOR WHERE PEOPLE POOP IN? OMG, I would be laughing my arse off at those backward dolts. Wasn't the toilet invented like a gazillion years ago?!?
Oh, well, I don't drink Pepsi, anyway. Nor should anyone else who loves America.
After all, Americans have a negative reaction when people from abroad make fun of our peculiar habits.
After reading the entire speech, I don't see anything wrong with it. A lot of Americans are boorish in foreign countries. I've seen them in action.
I thought Pepsico was supposed to be a Republican company. It was Nixon who got them into the Soviet Union's market.
Pepsico brands and companies:
http://www.pepsico.com/company/brands.shtml
Yeah, how many millions (or tens of millions) of kids die each year from cholera and other diseases related to bad sanitation? But when Americans point this out, we're somehow the bad guys? It doesn't make sense.
Well lots of Frenchmen are boorish in their own country.
After all, Americans have a negative reaction when people from abroad make fun of our peculiar habits.
And painting a whole nation, undoubtedly your largest customer base by far, with the actions of a few folks in China is gracious?
It's not good business to alienate your base customers.
She talks about economics on all the fingers except the ring finger which she deviates and talks about romance in South America including Latin America. Odd!
True. But France isn't a superpower that dominates the world. It doesn't matter how the French behave.
The point is that all the good work our troops are doing in Iraq can be undone by the behavior of a few idiots. That is her point.
Because of who we are and what we do, we stand out. People in foreign countries watch us carefully to see how we behave.
Going to a poor country like China and publicly making fun of their living conditions is reprehensible. Their government is evil, but the common people there need to see us as their friends.
It's called "winning hearts and minds". We owe that to our troops who are fighting and dying around the world.
Too true!
No, but people do it: whether it's Chinese who see some boorish Americans in Beijing or Americans who react similarly to foreign criticism of the US.
I'm not suggesting the bimbette who gave the speech didn't have a bad case of the "ugly Americans" -- only that there really are Americans who behave boorishly abroad and it's not a bad think to remind graduates that it reflects ill on the whole country.
I think Pepsi was once run by Joan Crawford, if I'm not mistaken. She isn't their first witch. Ps, I drink Stewart's Key Lime and other fancy stuff when I can.
Lighten up, guys and gals. The graduation speakers at the London Business School or INSEAD could have given a similar "global citizen speech." Drunken loud mouths are the same whatever their place of birth.
What is of more note is her perception of Latin America as the third finger because of the Samba, the antediluvian notion that Europe points anywhere but backwards and the condescending notion that Africa is a largely meaningless appendage. This total lack of cultural sensitivity (and intelligence) in a speech about cultural sensitivity and, god help us, emotional intelligence makes me want to pick up the phone and short Pepsico. Still metaphors are seldom perfect.
P.S. Personally, I am a green tea man.
Coke of Mexico was once run by Vicente Fox, and I'm not thrilled with him either.
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