Monday, June 15, 2009

Made in America?

Here's something sad, maddening and a bit amusing:

Made in America: Corporate PR, Not Practice

Big Business wants it both ways: It wants to wrap itself in the ol’ red, white and blue while feeding the decline of the U.S. economy through its actual practices.

Here’s the latest example of such corporate hypocrisy. Over the Memorial Day weekend, J.C. Penney advertised a silkscreen T-shirt bearing the slogan, “American Made.” Yet when Joe Allen, a retired apparel manufacturer in the Dallas area, bought the T-shirt, he found it actually was made in Mexico—”of USA fabric.”

Allen didn’t just shrug off such a blatant sleight of hand. He took action, contacting Steve Capozzola at the Alliance for American Manufacturing. Capozzola sent an e-mail to J.C. Penney, saying that the ad was deceptive and asking why the shirt “was emblazoned with an ‘American Made’ slogan when it was in fact made in Mexico.”

Here’s what J.C. Penney spokesperson Kelly Sanchez had to say:

"You indicate that there was a shirt that depicted the slogan “American Made.” This type of slogan is referring to the actual person wearing the shirt and not to the manufacturing of the merchandise."

Full article at the AFL-CIO Blog.

3 comments:

Andre said...

Don't ask why Lib, but I actually found this humorous. Perhaps it was the informality of the statement. Maybe it was just the absurdity of it. But I got a HUGE laugh out of this...almost as if I read it on the Onion.

Maybe I just find glaring hypocrisy funny somehow. I need prayer.

redante said...

Hehehe... that is exactly what I thought when I first saw it -- like it was something out of The Onion! The sheer absurdity of it being real and not satire or parody really drove home how we live in surreal times.

Expressviewtoday said...

Precisely the attitude our people should be paying attention to. Watch those labels carefully. I'd like to know if JCPenney has stepped up its efforts to actually buy in America