The Hightower Report

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Flying the Corporate Colors

Oh what a wicked web of deceit is weaved by corporations promoting their global brands in an area of global unrest!

Take French's Mustard. After the Bushites and their right-wing political henchmen began to demonize french fries, French toast, and all things French in a stunningly stupid outburst of knuckle-dragging jingoism, this maker of the common yellow mustard put out a nativist press release declaring: "The only thing French about French's Mustard is the name!"

The corporation's press release spoke of founder Robert French's "all-American dream" and about the mustard's iconic connection to hot dogs at baseball games -- America's national pastime. What the PR effort did not mention is that French's Mustard is no longer American -- it's owned by the British conglomerate Reckitt Benckiser PLC.

And, while French's was furiously waving the American flag here, it also was concerned that it not actually offend the French. After all, Reckitt Benckiser does more business in Europe than in the U.S., so the corporation only released its "all-American" boast in the U.S. -- taking care to keep it off the corporate Web site, since the French might see it there. "We are not anti-French," a flustered spokeswoman rushed out to say when word of French's anti-French statement spread. She added that, "We issued the press release in response to some confusion that was going on." Oh, thanks for clearing that up for us.

Meanwhile, such "We're America!" brand names as Coca-Cola, Pepsi, and McDonald's are suddenly trying to cloak their Americanism. For example, in India, with its large Muslim population, Coke is trying to fend off angry protests against Bush's reach for empire by emphasizing its Indian-ness: "We are primarily Indian, employing Indians," insisted a top executive of the corporation's subsidiary there.

It all reveals yet again that the true color of corporate America is not red, white, and blue -- but the color of money.

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The Internal Assault on America

"What country are we living in?"

This is the question I was asked as I waited for a connecting plane at the Dallas-Fort Worth airport recently. "This homeland security stuff has just gotten insane; it's B.S." the fellow said to me.

He was no longhaired student, no ACLU professor, or any of the other stereotypes that the media and politicians draw of those of us who dare protest the usurpation of our liberties by the flag-waving autocrats of BushCheneyAshcroftRumsfeld Incorporated. This fellow was an airline pilot -- a fiftysomething former military man who considers himself a conservative and, though I didn't ask, quite likely is Republican.

We had just gone through a "security incident" at the airport. I had been on an arriving plane, but my plane and dozens of others had not been allowed to taxi to our gates. It seems that someone inside the terminal had gone through a wrong door, stumbling into a secured area, setting off alarms, and triggering a knee-jerk security response that included making everyone evacuate three terminals.

Was this some slogan-spouting bomb-toting, maniacal terrorist? No. Apparently it was just a passenger who got confused. But under the insanity of our brave new BushWorld, the most innocent of people are treated as criminal and the most innocent of acts produces a code-red rush of police-state tactics.

My new pilot friend was right. This is not America. Our society is being militarized, our public budgets drained, our privacy stripped, and our fundamental right of dissent assaulted by a bloated and menacing security bureaucracy that does nothing to make us safer from Osama bin Laden (wherever he is).

How repressive is our society becoming? The pilot said he can't talk within his company, because the higher-ups have made it a firing offense to question what's happening to our liberties.

If you're not alarmed by the internal assault of our true Americanism, you're not paying attention. Liberty is fragile -- use it ... or lose it.