Kathy Lee, naivety and surrealism
Aaron Bradley
"Heavens," gasps the horrified television newsman, "it is possible that
Kathy Lee, telvision's huggable hostess, is profiting from the eploitation
of child labour?"
[Video clip of Kathy Lee venting to Regis. Visible signs of anger and
outrage, including flailing of arms, forward perching on chair and
almost visible spittle. Regis nods understandingly. How could anyone
that passionate have anything but the best of intentions? How could anyone
that rich do wrong?]
[Cut to picture of 12 year-old stitching soccer balls for 60 cents a
day, illustrative of child labour practices but safely out of the legal
distance of third world textile sweatshops.]
"Are some Americans making money on the backs of children? If so, why
are we allowing this to continue? Right after the break we'll talk to a
child labour activist who says Congress should be doing more to protect
the rights of children."
[Cut to commercial for a national department store, where smiling clerks
gesture to stacks of the finest consumer goods the world has ever needed
to sell.]
***
My first reaction to the Kathy Lee incident was, well, so what? Not "so
what", of course, to the multitude of ideologies, practices and psychology
that make it possible for one person to exploit another for personal profit,
but "so what" to the apparently shocking nature of the revelations. It was
as if the collective mass media had some how never before heard of child
labour, nor of any exploitive labour practices, either at home or abroad.
The media attention on industrial labour practices in this case, perversely
but tellingly, seems to have been stimulated solely on the basis of the
allegations against Kathy Lee. That is, if child labour and third world
workshops from hell exist, they're certainly not important enough to report
upon in their own right. The story being covered here was clearly that of
the plight of Kathy Lee, and more specifically the question of her moral
integrity.
Which brings together the two parts of my "so what?" reaction. First, that
it's mind-boggling evident that corporate America (and with that include the
other wealthy industrialized countries) makes vast amounts of money on the
backs of all sorts of sorry individuals, of all ages, genders and colours,
and that the very admissibility of a doctrine that promotes continual
accumulation of wealth is bound to find the means of accumulation unlimited
by mere humanitarian considerations. And second, "so what?" to the notion
that a well-known and well-loved television personality may, in fact, not
be
the very nice person who we'd like to have over for coffee.
Here we have someone on commercial television -- a corporation who's goal
is to make as much money as possible by selling advertising to other
corporations who want to make as much money as possible -- saying that,
while she would too like to make as much money as possible, she would
never do so by having a child churn dresses for suburban Americans. Just
as the network is assets that, while it would like to make as much money as
possible, it would never do so by producing mind-numbingly inane
programs or sensationalists newscasts. And that it's advertisers, while
each would like to make as much money as possible, would never do so by
making false product claims, or making unsafe products or, indeed, by
using cheap, poorly paid and poorly treated, foreign labour force.
Here's the television audience, a lot of them in poverty, shaking their
heads
because an idol making millions isn't perfect. Because that elusive,
unachievable dream of worry-free wealth among the Lees and Lettermens
really might turn out to be a farce, they might be just like the rest of us.
All those rich and famous people might have gotten rich and famous by
using people, known and anonymous, left and right. That (and this would
be a big step) they're rich because we're making them rich by looking at
their perfectly made-up faces on the box, that we've been duped into
believing that they must somehow deserve their fame and fortune by
dint of extraordinary intelligence or moral superiority. Just like you'd
expect if you thought there was a chance that someone you were dealing
with was trying to make as much money as possible, but somehow you
give more consideration to Kathy Lee than that guy in the paper who was
selling his Chevy. He's trying to make as much money as possible on the
sale of his truck, so you'd best be wary; surely Kathy Lee doesn't operate
from such crass motives?
Surely people as a rule can't believe that the capitalism, particularly
modern, trans-national corporate capitalism, has a self-regulating moral
code? I'm not a part of main street American -- did people actually
register shock over the Kathy Lee affair, or was it a case of media
modification? And does ANYBODY believe that a product, simply because
its sales tag sports the likeness of a celebrity, is somehow morally
sanctified?
Not so much on the news these days about child labour, but the story of
Kathy Lee continues. Because the issue isn't whether or not labour
practices are attrocious (or how to improve them), but whether Kathy Lee
herself is capable of attrocity.
Any lessons here? Perhaps when we have huge economic dispartities
between the first and third world, or even within the first world, we can
always get people to do vile work cheap because they need to eat. Of
course the solution to that problem, as phrased, has to do with a revolution
in economic objectives -- away from a system where people are allowed to
accumulate as much wealth as possible, and to pretty much do what they
like to the effort. Not surprisingly that was not the tone of the
television
response. It's pretty much verboten to suggest that there might be
something wrong with an economic system that permits the use of child
labour -- i.e. corporate capitalism -- so the coverage of the labour issue
pretty much focused on regulatory politics. That's one of the things I find
surreal about the coverage -- that the exploitation of labour in the modern
world is due to some unscrupulous characters, or to inadequate (domestic)
legislative measures. The tone was "isn't it shocking that this goes on?",
as if no-one has ever been injured in the construction of corporate
America.
But the coverage of child and third-world labour seems to have lost it's
steam. The story of Kathy Lee continues, however. And the lesson here
seems a hell of a lot clearer. If we keep investing our time and energy in
the adoration of people we see on television we're bound to get burned.
In recent years this form of celebrity worship seems to have gotten worse
and worse. People who don't know the name of any political leader or
party, or what their children learn in school, or what pollutants the
factory next door is spewing into the air, have an intimate knowledge of
some celebrity's life. Maybe there's an even darker lesson here about our
increasing propensity to select kings and queens in a world where we had
tenatively chucked them aside in favour of notions like equality and
democracy. It scares me to see the increasing adoration of the useless
rich (which is the category into which I put most talk-show hosts) because
it endorses the idea that wealthy people are more important than the rest
of us.
Aaron Bradley
abra...@banff.net
Z
On 29 Aug 1996 13:14:44 GMT, y...@somehost.somedomain (ashbyrne) wrote:
>In article <322535...@bowest.awinc.com>, abra...@bowest.awinc.com
>says...
>>
>>"Heavens," gasps the horrified television newsman, "it is possible that
>>Kathy Lee, telvision's huggable hostess, is profiting from the
>eploitation
>>of child labour?"
>
>>......
>
>Aaron,
>
>I would tend to agree with your take on the Kathy Lee saga. The only
>way to avoid this kind of skewed reporting is to have a media free of
>commercial influence. I understand even PBS is dependant on corporate
>sponsorship?
>In Australia we have the ABC, which is government funded and gives
>perhaps a more cynical coverage of events. But ultimately it too is
>answerable to the forces that be. A newly elected government has
>taken revenge on the ABC by cutting it's finances.
>
>I guess no one is willing to bite the hand that feeds them.
>
>Simon Ashley
>
It's virtually impossible to find a news source that's not biased one
way or the other. Diversity is one answer and being aware of the bias
of the source is another. Another problem in many cases is that the
individual is that it's the individual with the bias and therefore
perceives anything he hears or reads not in agreement with his/her
beliefs is biased.
We have 2 channel here in the States called C-span that covers nothing
but politics including full coverage of all House and Senate sessions.
They are about as unbiased as any source I know of and yet they are
continually being accused of being biased. The clue that they are not
biased is the fact that the criticism comes just about equally from
both sides.
F. Prefect
"Bob Dole never met a tax he didn't hike. When Bob
Dole talks about leadership for the future, he's the
man who led the fight for five major tax increases in
the past five years."
Jack Kemp....2/11/88. Chief Designer of the Kemp/dole
Economic plan.
Do we now have a born again Bob?
Dan Edelen
We've all profited from cheap labor, be it child or otherwise. All of us
are guilty. Kathie Lee presents a wholesome image, which makes for an
easy "whipping boy" by the media, so she garners the most attention.
Frankly, I think they ought to leave the woman alone and stop being so
self-righteous.
You could also argue that if a kid stitches a soccer ball for $0.60 a
day and that $0.60 buys food, clothes, and shelter, then aren't they
making a decent wage for their society? Not every country has the cost
of living that First World countries do. World Vision, Compassion
International, Feed the Children, UNICEF...they all provide about $20 a
month to feed, clothe, educate, and shelter a child. A kid who works for
$0.60 a day is therefore pretty close to making his own keep in a
country where $200 is a yearly wage for an adult male. And there are
plenty of countries like that. If that's what it takes to stay alive,
then brother, we better take it!
And what of child labor? Children have been doing back-breaking labor
(usually under the supervision of their parents) since time began. Maybe
if we made our own American kids work a bit harder they wouldn't be out
hanging around malls shoplifting, blowing each other's heads off with
guns, or getting their girlfriends pregnant. One could argue that the
history of juvenile delinquency started when we moved from an agrarian
to an industrial society. Children became devalued and no longer served
to support the family...now we have a whole society of nihilistic and
bored children.
Just my $0.02,
Dan Edelen
as...@eos.net
Aaron Bradley
ashbyrne wrote:
>I would tend to agree with your take on the Kathy Lee saga. The only
>way to avoid this kind of skewed reporting is to have a media free of
>commercial influence. I understand even PBS is dependant on corporate
>sponsorship?
Yes, as governments cut budgets American public broadcasting is
becoming more and more dependent upon corporate sponsorship,
and the corporate recognition presented at the beginning of
programs are looking more and more like right-out ads.
>In Australia we have the ABC, which is government funded and gives
>perhaps a more cynical coverage of events. But ultimately it too is
>answerable to the forces that be. A newly elected government has
>taken revenge on the ABC by cutting it's finances.
Not unlike the situation here in Canada. Personally my largest
source of news is CBC Radio, which remains (for the time
being) entirely publicly funded, and thus ad-free. (Politics and
economics aside, television news is one's poorest current
affairs option, since by its nature it's almost bound to be
shallow and superficial -- the enduring problem of the amount
of information that can be presented in a sound bite.)
>I guess no one is willing to bite the hand that feeds them.
Though you'd be surprised (or maybe you wouldn't) at the
number of people who vehemently deny this, and are
affronted by the suggestion that the (American) national news
media is anything but impartial. Proof to the contrary is
not hard to find -- are you familiar with the whole debacle
with 60 Minutes/Dateline NBC and the Brown & Williamson tobacco
company? (see
http://www2.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/smoke/tindex.html,
pages about the PBS (!) Frontline documentary on the Brown
cases).
Cheers,
Aaron
abra...@banff.net
ashbyrne
>Kathy Lee, telvision's huggable hostess, is profiting from the
eploitation
>of child labour?"
>......
Aaron,
I would tend to agree with your take on the Kathy Lee saga. The only
way to avoid this kind of skewed reporting is to have a media free of
commercial influence. I understand even PBS is dependant on corporate
sponsorship?
In Australia we have the ABC, which is government funded and gives
perhaps a more cynical coverage of events. But ultimately it too is
answerable to the forces that be. A newly elected government has
taken revenge on the ABC by cutting it's finances.
I guess no one is willing to bite the hand that feeds them.
Simon Ashley
Aaron Bradley
Dan Edelen wrote:
> You could also argue that if a kid stitches a soccer ball for $0.60 a
> day and that $0.60 buys food, clothes, and shelter, then aren't they
> making a decent wage for their society? Not every country has the cost
> of living that First World countries do. World Vision, Compassion
> International, Feed the Children, UNICEF...they all provide about $20 a
> month to feed, clothe, educate, and shelter a child. A kid who works for
> $0.60 a day is therefore pretty close to making his own keep in a
> country where $200 is a yearly wage for an adult male.
And that $200 a year gives buys you a grinding life of abject poverty
that wouldn't be tolerated in any developed nation. Or perhaps you'd
be happy to live in Third World conditions, and see your children's
education and future sacrificed for 60 cents a day?
> And there are
> plenty of countries like that. If that's what it takes to stay alive,
> then brother, we better take it!
Just the fact that there are deplorable conditions in the Third World
countries doesn't mean that we shouldn't try to improve those
conditions, especially by the expedient of not contributing to the
situation by exploiting it. Part of the reason wages are so low in
developing countries is because of the competition in cheap labour,
as poor countries ply for the pittance multinationals are willing
to spend for things like celebrity designer labels. Of course the
employees in the States who market and distribute the Third
World-produced goods make nothing like 60 cents a day, nor do the
department store employees who sell it, and certainly not the
celebrity that flogs it. So it's not simply of question of "it's
a tough world over there" -- part of the reason it's so tough
is because of our greed and consequent affluence.
> And what of child labor? Children have been doing back-breaking labor
> (usually under the supervision of their parents) since time began.
This is argument based on a false premise -- that history and morality
are synonymous. People have been murdering one another since time
began: does this justify the activity? How about slavery, another
enduring slice in our history. And, in reference to your point below
regarding the shift from agrarian to industrial society, one can
hardly use ancient agrarian labour patterns as an measure of those
labour practices in a contemporary context. Should we be schooling
children instead of working them? -- this wasn't even a question in
the Middle Ages, where almost nobody went to school. Of course, the
very economic system that profits from Third World child labour demands
that there be a certain educated population in the First World to
deal with the buying and selling, so they're going to have to keep
some of their sons and daughters from off of the factory floor.
> Maybe
> if we made our own American kids work a bit harder they wouldn't be out
> hanging around malls shoplifting, blowing each other's heads off with
> guns, or getting their girlfriends pregnant.
Sorry -- I don't get the connection between these acts. But if making
our ten year-olds stitch soccer balls all day is the only way of solving
the crimes you list, I don't think that's much of an improvement. I can
think of a lot of reasons for each of these different crimes, and none
of them involve the fact that we're not working our children to death.
> One could argue that the
> history of juvenile delinquency started when we moved from an agrarian
> to an industrial society. Children became devalued and no longer served
> to support the family...now we have a whole society of nihilistic and
> bored children.
I think in the Third World you'd find them nihilistic and exhausted.
I agree that we have a society of nihilistic children, but not because
they no longer "support the family" -- though I think you're on the
right track. They are nilhilists because they don't see any
opportunities
for participation in the world they'll inherit. People that control
their
lives and will continue to control their lives -- their employers, the
bank -- don't want people meddling in the smooth process of making money
in large quantitities. And since the political process has become
dominated by just the sort of power that large quantities of cash can
buy, the political agenda becomes dominated by the interests of those
who spend it. So they have spending power -- indeed, the lives of
young Americans are dominated from birth by people selling them things,
yelling at from them television a hundred times a day, every day of the
year, every day of their lives -- spending power and, as the ultimate
good in life, more spending power. So they live in a world when money
is the only thing that counts, and a world that is seemingly impossible
to change. They are perhaps nihilists because they see a world that's
become so mean, so favouring greed over morality, that children are
mistreated to enrich the coffers of the-already-rich.
- Aaron
Dan Edelen
Aaron Bradley wrote:
>
> Dan Edelen wrote:
> > You could also argue that if a kid stitches a soccer ball for $0.60 a
> > day and that $0.60 buys food, clothes, and shelter, then aren't they
> > making a decent wage for their society? Not every country has the cost
> > of living that First World countries do. World Vision, Compassion
> > International, Feed the Children, UNICEF...they all provide about $20 a
> > month to feed, clothe, educate, and shelter a child. A kid who works for
> > $0.60 a day is therefore pretty close to making his own keep in a
> > country where $200 is a yearly wage for an adult male.
>
> And that $200 a year gives buys you a grinding life of abject poverty
> that wouldn't be tolerated in any developed nation. Or perhaps you'd
> be happy to live in Third World conditions, and see your children's
> education and future sacrificed for 60 cents a day?
Sorry, you provide no answers. If the kid makes enough to feed and
clothe himself, then he is better off then being dead, which is exactly
the way you would have him be if you took away his $0.60 a day job.
If you have the answers to reversing all the poverty in the world
immediately, then you must be the messiah. Till we have an answer,
slaving away at a seemingly cruel job separates the quick from the dead.
This child cannot wait even a few weeks for you to change his life
around. What kind of altruistic nonsense do you believe?
> > And there are
> > plenty of countries like that. If that's what it takes to stay alive,
> > then brother, we better take it!
>
> Just the fact that there are deplorable conditions in the Third World
> countries doesn't mean that we shouldn't try to improve those
> conditions, especially by the expedient of not contributing to the
> situation by exploiting it. Part of the reason wages are so low in
> developing countries is because of the competition in cheap labour,
> as poor countries ply for the pittance multinationals are willing
> to spend for things like celebrity designer labels. Of course the
> employees in the States who market and distribute the Third
> World-produced goods make nothing like 60 cents a day, nor do the
> department store employees who sell it, and certainly not the
> celebrity that flogs it. So it's not simply of question of "it's
> a tough world over there" -- part of the reason it's so tough
> is because of our greed and consequent affluence.
Ask people in the Pacific Rim who are making several times what the
average yearly wage is in their country because greedy multi-national
technology-based companies are investing there whether or not they are
being exploited! Micronesia now has a higher standard of living than the
US per capita! All this can be blamed on American investment in business
overseas. Singapore is experiencing phenomenal growth due to "greedy"
American companies and that is being passed on to the workers in the
plants. When Conner opened up a hard drive manufacturing plant there,
they turned away several thousand people who wished to work. The workers
at this plant alone made nearly ten times the wage of other workers in
the area.
You sound like some Trotsky-ite when you spout nonsense about greedy
multi-nationals.
> > And what of child labor? Children have been doing back-breaking labor
> > (usually under the supervision of their parents) since time began.
>
> This is argument based on a false premise -- that history and morality
> are synonymous. People have been murdering one another since time
> began: does this justify the activity? How about slavery, another
> enduring slice in our history. And, in reference to your point below
> regarding the shift from agrarian to industrial society, one can
> hardly use ancient agrarian labour patterns as an measure of those
> labour practices in a contemporary context. Should we be schooling
> children instead of working them? -- this wasn't even a question in
> the Middle Ages, where almost nobody went to school. Of course, the
> very economic system that profits from Third World child labour demands
> that there be a certain educated population in the First World to
> deal with the buying and selling, so they're going to have to keep
> some of their sons and daughters from off of the factory floor.
No, it is an argument stating that the problem of child labor is not
something you invented. Who fixes the point at which a child is worked
too hard? Do parents who own farms and use their kids on the farms
submit them to the horrors of child labor? One man's labor is another
man's atrocity. Certainly there are abuses today like those in the
industrial revolution in Britain. But not every family in a Third World
country can afford NOT to have their children work, even if it is 16
hours a day, especially when the choice is between life or death. There
are cultures in this world where every day people have their very
existence in their hands every day. Life is not pretty, but we have to
face reality and not live in a fantasy world.
> > Maybe
> > if we made our own American kids work a bit harder they wouldn't be out
> > hanging around malls shoplifting, blowing each other's heads off with
> > guns, or getting their girlfriends pregnant.
> Sorry -- I don't get the connection between these acts. But if making
> our ten year-olds stitch soccer balls all day is the only way of solving
> the crimes you list, I don't think that's much of an improvement. I can
> think of a lot of reasons for each of these different crimes, and none
> of them involve the fact that we're not working our children to death.
"Idleness is the devil's playground." Kids in America today are given
little opportunity to contribute to their own well-being, their
family's, or their society's. Kids today are molly-coddled by their
parents. Few are taught the importance of hard work. They (and many of
their parents) think the world owes them a living. When that living
doesn't come their way (or in the converse, they are giving everything
they want), they find destructive ways to spend their time. This leads
to a devaluation of themselves, their family, and their society, leading
to a nihilistic outlook on life.
I'm not advocating stitching soccer balls all day as the solution, but
if it kept an American kid from delinquency, then maybe it is worth it.
Instead, maybe volunteering at a drop-in center or working with a group
to clean up polluted rivers, or maybe just doing the lawn at their house
is all a kid needs to find some worth in working and contributing.
You've got it wrong. The bored American kid with "nothing to do" and
everything given to him says, "Life is worthless, I wish I was dead."
The Third World kid says, "I want to live, what can I do to stay alive?"
The Third World kid is ANYTHING but nihilistic. If they were nihilistic
they would just lay down and die.
The janitor at the college I graduated from retired in 1992 at the age
of 54. He and I swapped jokes every day and talked about our lives so I
knew him pretty well. He was a Hmong villager that came to the United
States as a boat person in 1977. He had a wife and eleven children. They
left Asia penniless. Once here in the States, he worked three jobs and
his wife took in work at home. All of his children worked at least one
job here as well or found ways to contribute to the family.
When he retired, a newspaper article about him repoted that he had
become a multi-millionaire through hard work and some pretty good
investment choices in the decade and a half he had been in the US. All
of his children had made it through school and most had already gone or
were going to college. He financed their educations out of his own
pocket and took no federal funds. He figured the United States did not
owe him anything, but he owed it everything. Also, the man was a devout
Christian who was one of the most humble and moral people I had ever
met. He did not even pocket the change he would find around campus, but
would turn it in to the college.
So if you want to say Pak was a victim of American corporate greed, and
that he was beaten down by banks and corporations so that he compromised
his integrity as a human being, that he had no force of will to stand
against The Machine, then you would look pretty ignorant.
The kind of blather you are spouting that says that everyone succumbs to
money and that everyone can be bought is possibly the most nihilistic
attitude of which I know. There are people whose lives rise above the
masses and make a difference.
In truth, everyone makes choices every day to live or die, even that
poor kid making $0.60 a day. I think, from what you have written, that
you tend to be the kind that cries out that the world will end tomorrow
and that there is no hope because we have no control of our lives. It
seems to me that the poor kid is making a better choice every day than
you are.
Dan Edelen
Barwert K.J. van der Plas
Well said, Dan.
Have any of these so-called 'World Improvers' ever thought what would
happen if every country in the world had the same standard of living?
Barwert van der Plas.