Pepsico flipped off due to middle finger

WorldNetDaily.com ^ | FRiday May 20 2005 | Joe Kovacs

[Brian Allen]

Rush Limbaugh sounds off on controversy as many urge boycotts, firing of president

An apology by PepsiCo's president who likened the United States to a middle finger is apparently doing little to calm outrage caused by her remarks.

In the wake of WorldNetDaily's coverage of Indra Nooyi's commencement speech to graduates at Columbia Business School in which she compared the U.S. to the middle finger with both positive and negative connotations, consumers are vowing to boycott the company, and the topic is being widely discussed on talk radio.

[cyborg]

What about drinking some...water! :-)

[Brian Allen]

OK.

[madison10]

This was one employee of the company. I am appalled by her comments but they do not reflect the view of the company. They are her personal opinions.

Maybe they should find her replacement. Why bring a good company down because one of their employees is a liberal fool who cannot keep her opinions to herself.

[cyborg]

as long as it's not dasani... which is Coke's bottled water subsidiary.

[Brian Allen]

It's Singha.

I'm in Asia.

[cyborg]

Dasani is the same as tap water imho. I'm glad I don't drink solos at all. Singha sounds nice but after the day I had today, cane and coke is in order. Take care!

[Brian Allen]

Mine's a Singha-manufactured club soda!

[cyborg]

My sister came back from Thailand recently. She could have brought back the Thai beer and club soda instead of so much damned tea.

[Axhandle]

“But be secure in the knowlege that many of US are capable of dealing with more than one concern at once.”

That does not really address the issue. The issue is that people get outraged over such minor offenses rather than things that are actually important. I understand that people are capable of being outraged over many things at once. It just seems like there is greater energy and disgust towards this broad’s speech than against more legitimate and dangerous threats to our society. Maybe I am just a little too mellow. This speech, when I heard about it, did not set me off in the same way that it appears to have enraged others. To me, it was just another piece of moronic, anti-American trash that did not deserve any attention. I thought that it should have been relegated to the left-wing utopia in which it was spewed.

[BnBlFlag]

Her name indicates that she could be a "furriner". If true, could she be naive enough to not realize the significance of the middle finger in our culture?

[the anti-liberal]

I didn't take time to read this whole thread, but I just want to 'deposit' my two cents.

I think her analogy with the hand and the fingers was actually very good and positive- it just happens that the middle finger is associated with an defamatory epithet.

If this automatic association was not present, this entire thread and discussion would be entirely different.

Having said that, I really don't know what her politics are, and given the unfortunate prevalence for liberal anti-americanism, it really wouldn't surprise me much to learn that her actual intent truly was to subtly give her country the finger.

[Goodgirlinred]

I just read her speech in that link. She was not bashing the United States. She was using all the five fingers to represent each of the five continents. The United States, as the most powerful, was represented by the longest digit, the middle finger. That did not mean any disrespect. Read her speech again, this time without looking for something bad. This was something that was misinterpreted by a college student who put it online and it went on to radio talk shows. Things grow bigger and bigger with the telling. From the little bit I read in the earlier thread, I thought she was bashing America, too. I don't, now that I have read her speech.

[chgomac]

I've read the whole thing & her only example of Americans was an ugly story about some US businessmen being loud & boorish in a foriegn bar. My gut tell me she told this one story because it's how she sees America.

[Randy Papadoo]

GGIR....Seems to me the Pepsi folks themselves show just how far off your impressions are.

Two executives have apologized for her speech. Even they believe it was done wrong.

Axhandle.....Aren't you getting sick and tired of liberal newsmakers (VIPs and media, etc.) just constantly taking gratuitous political shots and insults at the USA and at conservative thought generally?

Within this past week or so we had Newsweek, Pepsi, and even George Lucas in his Star Wars movie, and I, for one, am just getting so fed up that I believe we need to make noise whenever it happens. All these turkeys have eaten crow when the pressure is put on them, because they're wrong and they know it.

Re Star Wars: George Lucas is in synch with Micheal Moore. They are friends. Now the latest movie was written seven years ago, I'm told, and the bad guys are associated with evil capitalistic organizations, etc, and I read here at FR that the leader of this evil capitalistic organization is named "Nute Gunray", a coy play on the names of Newt Gingrich and Ronald Reagan. (I haven't seen the movie yet myself.)

If those folks won't give us a break, why should we give them one? They create the crows, we just make 'em eat them.

[maica]

Within this past week or so we had Newsweek, Pepsi, and even George Lucas in his Star Wars movie, and I, for one, am just getting so fed up that I believe we need to make noise whenever it happens.

Ditto! Ms Nooyi even dissed our neighbor countries in North America when she committed a quintessential "American" gaffe of calling our continent "the United States" during her geopolitical lesson to MBA grads. She demonstrated that she has become what she was warning them not to be.

[krunkygirl]

a "we" is a gathering of reasonable conservatives

[JarheadFromFlorida]

[[If Nooyi had made a concomitantly un-PC comment, you just know the NY Times et. al would have been all over it.]]

The liberal media has a policy of going out of their way to avoid stories that make minorities look bad. Please see:

"Coloring The News"
How Political Correctness Has Corrupted American Journalism

http://www.coloringthenews.com/

[Goodgirlinred]

Oh, that was not in the article I read. Rats! I want to see the whole thing. I guess I will have to Google it.