Victor Davis Hanson on Indra Nooyi
For those who have been following the controversy surrounding President of PepsiCo, Indra Nooyi, and her remarks at Columbia Business School, Victor Davis Hanson weighs in today on National Review Online.
He groups Nooyi together with other global elites who benefit from unparallelled American opportunity, and then hypocritally disparage the very system that catapulted them to positions of wealth and privilege. He cites Imran Khan, an internationally-known cricket star now running for public office in Pakistan who incited the Newsweek riots; Arundhati Roy, an Indian novelist who has won the Booker-prize, who is also a harsh critic of America; and Lars von Trier the Danish filmmaker who specializes in the anti-America genre.
I particularly liked Hanson’s point that these privileged elites indulge in their anti-American rants as something of an egoistic pasttime:
The anti-Americanism that we frequently see and hear, then, is often a plaything of the international elite — a corporate grandee, a leisured athlete, or a refined novelist who flies in and out of the West, counts on its globalizing appendages for wealth, and then mocks those who make it all possible — but never to the point that their own actions would logically follow their rhetoric and thus cost them so dearly.
We might expect that a chagrined Ms. Nooyi would resign from Pepsi since it is the glossy fingernail of the American middle finger that apparently so bothers her. We pray that Mr. Khan will stay among the mobs and rioters of the madrassas and mosques he stirred up. Perhaps novelist Roy can write in an indigenous Indian language, peddle her books at home, and thereby disinvest from this hegemonic system that drives her to fury.
Meanwhile, Nooyi appears to have weathered the storm her remarks created. However, if traffic on this site is any indication, there are still people interested in the issue.
And we’re still not drinking Pepsi or Gatorade here.
Same at our house. Pepsi is on boycott, and Lays, etc. Here’s an American middle finger for you, PepsiCo.
Controversy? Give me a break. I was there when she gave the speech, and she was obviously making a joke. I didn’t meet one person who was offended.
Her whole point was that America should work with the rest of the world to lead the way, rather than standing alone.
Wow. Big controversy there.
Hi, saw your recent comment at The Wide Awakes, followed your link, like your site. Now I’ve found another VDH fan. I wrote on this same article in broad terms and raised some ire internationally. Glad to have found your blog.
I’m guessing, Downtown Lad, that you haven’t read VDH’s full article. Since you “were there” I guess you don’t need to.
And even if you met no one who was offended, that means nothing to me. No one in the audience was offended either when Howard Dean besmirched our President, DeLay, and the GOP at his recent speeches.
To your second point: America HAS been leading the way, much to the chagrin of the liberal socialist Euro-elite and the corrupt UN. And, in fact, many have follwed. But not all. The Euro Elite chose their own interesting path. In view of the votes this week in France and the Netherlands, they are now having to deal with it.
Those International America-hating Elites
The Friday 27 May column by Victor Davis Hanson, titled “Our Spoiled and Unhappy Global Elites”, is a study in just how the liberal annointed class worldwide can provide endless hours of entertainment even as they persistently and predict…