[The San Francisco Examiner refused to print this column, in part because of concerns over Nike's possible sponsorship of the Examiner's "Bay to Breakers" marathon race. However, it ran in the Miami Herald, The Bay Guardian, and the San Francisco Weekly.]
It is a good thing that I don't have kids. I would refuse to buy them N--e shoes and forbid them to go to N--eTown. And they would hate me.
Or worse, to keep them from hating me, I would buy the shoes, let the kids go, and hate myself.
The only thing my kids would want would be to wear clothes with the ubiquitous N--e swoosh on them so that they could be cool and fit in at school. I would annoy them with talk about "commodity fetishes" and other evil byproducts of unbridled capitalism.
The kids would argue: "But what about Michael Jordan? Monica Seles? Jerry Rice? The University of North Carolina women's basketball team?"
I would counter: "What about 16-year-old garment workers in Vietnam who make $2 a day? What about sublimating your own individuality to be a walking billboard for a company that's already richer than God?"
To my kids, N--eTown would represent a throbbing, high-tech, hip-hop paradise on Earth; to me, the gates of hell.
Why do I use dashes instead of spelling out the name of the N--e athletic shoe and clothing company and its latest marketing megadevice, N--eTown?
Well, journalists use dashes when they print obscene or offensive words.
After a visit to the N--eTown in San Francisco, I believe that N--e has so crossed the line into wretched excess that it qualifies for dashes.
Crossing the line isn't all that easy in a culture where excess and success are interchangeable.
Leave it to N--e to just do it.
I'm not talking only about the much-publicized exploitative labor practices that N--e and dozens of other U.S. manufacturers have engaged in at their offshore factories. Practices, by the way, that N--e executives vehemently denied until the pile of evidence go so large and smelly that the U.S. labor secretary had to yell "Foul!"
I mean something bigger. Something even more offensive than CEOs such as N--e's Philip Knight, who pull down astronomical salaries and see nothing wrong with paying human beings $2 a day to make shoes that sell to other human beings for $140.
I'm talking about the way one American clothing company's power and influence has reached grotesque proportions. N--eTown customers don't mind that everything for sale there is way overpriced. They don't mind that those offshore workers are indeed exploited or even--God bless America--that the work was moved out of the United States to maximize profits.
Looking for substance? This ain't where it's at. Substance is actually playing on a basketball team. Style is buying a copy of UNC's championship women's squad's Indonesian-made warm-up jacket for $120 with the pretense of substance. As the label intones: "This gear is inspired by the performance and attitude of this team."
Oh. I thought it was this team's marketability and the incredible return on N--e's investment that this team will ensure. For the price of an underwritten tournament here and there and a few boxes of cheaply made shoes, uniforms, water bottles, and equipment bags, N--e bought the rights to the official image of this team.
Am I picking on N--e because it's the only company that has crossed the line into the land of corporate hypergreed? Because it's the only purveyor of overpriced, empty identity? The only international profit machine that can't afford a conscience until human rights groups start naming names and murmuring "boycott"? I wish.
I'm picking on N--e because it is the biggest, the coolest. Because it pays the best athletes the most millions to endorse its products. Because you can't walk a block without seeing its logo. Because it is scary to see something as big and influential as N--e with no sense of moral responsibility for counterbalance.
I'm picking on it because I have been to N--eTown, where twisted values are showcased every day for children and the parents who want to make them happy.