My personal boycott (for as long as it lasts)

Some things you just can’t help or at least you can plead ignorance.

Like the surprise today when I pulled off my boots. I bought a pair of Ariats last year – partly because I wanted to; partly because they were Ariats; and partly because I’ve always wanted a pair of solid black boots, none of the prissy colored crap that stands-in for the top part of so many boots these days. But this is not about boots.

I looked in the boot to double check size etc. and realized, (gasp!) that they were made in China. I’m sorry. I had no idea. I’d take them back if I could. I’m sure it is next to impossible to buy cheap stuff made in America. Only China it seems can make the really cheap stuff we need to buy at Wal Mart. But cowboy boots? Please!

Somewhere John Wayne is changing positions.

I hoped – figured – guessed that most boots were made in Texas from the leather taken from the hides of longhorn cattle raised among the prickly pear.

Does China even have any cattle?

My boycott is not to avoid things made in China. That would likely be impossible. What I intend to boycott – for as long as I can hold out – are the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. I will NOT be going.

I am still finding it odd that going back to 1980, we refused to go to Russia for the summer Olympics because they had invaded Afghanistan the winter before. We still have some sort of embargo toward/against (I am never certain which direction these things run) Cuba – except for really good expensive Cuban cigars. I just heard a report today that Bruce Willis smokes four expensive Cuban cigars every day. That adds up to more than $30,000 per year for those cigars. That ought to pay for a few of Fidel’s uniforms.

Back to the Olympics. It was easy to boycott in 1980. The Russian economy was tanking. The cold war had perhaps reached its apex. Few American companies saw their future in the soon to dissolve Soviet Union.

China on the other hand has billions (to quote Carl Sagan; God rest his cosmic soul) of current and potential consumers for American made products. So our Fortune 500s are falling all over themselves to be Olympic sponsors. We’re shipping so much of our steel to China that there isn’t enough for us. Have you priced anything made of steel lately? I don’t buy much but I do buy fence posts. 10-15 years ago I could get them for under $2 each on sale. Now they approach $4 apiece in some places.

Beijing is on a building spree to get everything spruced up for the hordes of athletes, journos and tourists who will flock there next year. I will not be one of them.

There is no connection whatsoever with the following and the former but … back in Idi Amin’s days (or Papa Docs, Pol Pot – pick your favorite dictator and human rights violator), if by chance, one of their countries could have hosted the Olympics or even any special event of any kind. Do you think we’d send our athletes? Of course not you say but I’m being silly. China is not Uganda, or Haiti or Cambodia.

But what are they? They are still one of the five countries under Communist control or government (Cuba, Laos, North Korea and Vietnam round out the list). If they didn’t have those bazillion people do you thing we’d even care? Would Coke be a proud sponsor of the Laotian Games? Doubt it. Cuba, maybe, but only because they make a lot of good baseball players and pretty good rum I hear (oh, and cigars).

So until I hear that Chinese people can do what they want to do, go to church when and where they want to, travel freely, don’t use prisoners to make exported products that sell below cost and in general start behaving like a good portion of the rest of the world, then I intend to not go to the Olympics and to make this even more serious, not watch any of them on TV.

Check back with me in summer of ’08 to see how I’m doing.