"Pay no attention to the lead paint behind the curtain."

Only read this if you're in the mood to be totally disgusted. It would be funny if it weren't so tragic. Rick Perlstein covers several topics in his typically lucid fashion - the excerpt below is just a taste.

The Creative Society
Rick Perlstein
August 17, 2007
tompaine.com

I woke up the other morning to a cascade of apologetics from a toy industry spokesperson interviewed on NPR's Morning Edition. She was explaining away the recall, this past week, of nine million Mattel Barbies and lead-painted toy cars manufactured in China. Groggily groping for the snooze button, I caught the tail end of reporter Renée Montagne's question"...really does seem there's an increase in problems with imports from China in this last year. This is, as I just said, the second recall in a month for Mattel. What's going on?"and the flack's pat response:

"Well, we do recall products on a regular basis. This year we've recalled over 400 products. Of those, 44 of those recalls have been of toys. Frankly, Renee, that is a lower number than the number of toy recalls we did last year and the year before. Nevertheless, it is something of concern to us. We look at it very, very closely. With respect to what's going on, as I'm sure your listeners realize, much of our manufacturing has moved outside of the United States and much of it is in China. So if that is where products are being made it is not unexpected that that is where the recalls would be occurring."

And this, I thought to myself, was frightfully clever stuff. The reason crap from China seems so crappy is just because there's lots of crap being made in China--nothing to do with the fact that, say, Chinese newspapers aren't allowed to report "negative news" about business, thus giving Chinese factories impunity to work whatever scams they can dream up without fear of discovery; or that Chinese factory owners who slather lead paint on toy trains are allowed to escort inquiring American reporters to jail. No: the fact that there were more recalled Chinese toys was just a function of the fact that there are more Chinese toys. Simple arithmetic. Move along. Pay no attention to the lead paint behind the curtain.