THE BOYCOTT DU JOUR

[Danny Kennedy <dannyk@igc.apc.org>]

  >THE BOYCOTT DU JOUR                                    
  >By  Martin F. Nolan, Boston Globe Columnist
  >Boston Globe, August 6, 1997
  >	
  >In 1881, an Irish rental agent, Captain Charles Boycott, worked for the
  >earl of Erne, an absentee landlord with holdings in County Mayo.   The
  >Irish Land League, led by the nationalist leader Charles Stewart Parnell,
  >urged lower rents for farmers.
  >
  >When Boycott refused to reduce rents for his neighbors, they ostracized
  >him, cutting off all economic contact:  no servants, no farm-hands, no
  >commerce, no mail.   His name stuck, and not just because of Mayo men’s
  >fabled attitude for grudges.
  >
  >In this century, the boycott was an effective weapon against apartheid in
  >South Africa.  As serious, hard work, the boycott is a compelling
  >expression of moral revulsion.  As simply a badge of moral superiority, a
  >boycott can be ludicrously ineffective.  
  >
  >Not so in Massachusetts, which has dismayed the State Department, a useful
  >thing to do.   The U.S. ambassador to Indonesia visited Boston to urge
  >caution on a selective purchasing law aimed at Indonesian abuse of human
  >rights in East Timor.  A Bay State law affecting Burma is similar to
  >federal trade sanctions against the Burmese, so the idea of the feds
  >lecturing the states selectively does not square with the universality of
  >human rights.
  >
  >The Southern Baptist Convention, upset at the Walt Disney Co. for the
  >latter’s toleration of non-Baptist habits, sponsors a boycott to de-fang
  >the Lion King and to exterminate Mickey Mouse.   This effort may be as
  >effective as the official US boycott of Havana cigars and other Cuban
  >products some 35 years ago.  That bipartisan effort was supposed to stamp
  >out godless Communism in this hemisphere.  Castro, like Disney, survives.
  >
  >On the left, and on the left coast, take Berkeley Calif., please.  In the
  >San Francisco Chronicle, Elaine Herscher reports that "Berkeley is
  >boycotting so many things that soon there may be no gasoline  politically
  >correct enough to run the city’s vehicles."  Arco, Texaco, Mobil, and Shell
  >gurgle with improper political additives because they trade with the wrong
  >countries, so what goes into the city’s police cars and fire engines?
  >Herscher writes:   "Exxon is the only major oil company that’s not on the
  >banned list.  And that’s no help.  The city is unofficially boycotting
  >Exxon, too, because of its sluggish response to the… Valdez oil spill that
  >fouled 700 miles of Alaskan shoreline."
  >
  >In the 1960s, boycotts were an awkward mix of rectitude and trendiness.  I
  >covered one of the first events  organized to boycott lettuce.   At a
  >combined rally-cocktail party in a Manhattan townhouse, a famous person
  >asked me  about the effort in which her famous husband was involved: "Isn’t
  >this a neat idea?"
  >
  >As politely as I could, I suggested that the men who mined the diamonds
  >adorning her wrist and throat would heartily envy the conditions under
  >which the farm workers of Cesar Chavez harvested agribiz lettuce.  But
  >South Africa was not in vogue then.  Kern County in California was.
  >
  >In the 1980s, I wandered into an urban food cooperative out of curiosity,
  >not hunger, which was just as well, because the boycott wall was as big as
  >some the countries being boosted or boycotted.   In ideological detail no
  >pesticide could penetrate, broadsides saluted or denounced Guatemalan rice,
  >Nicaraguan coffee, and Salvadoran bananas.  
  >
  >Guilt by association is Senator Joseph McCarthy’s legacy to the boycotting
  >impulse.  Cigarettes now rank with Communism as a bad idea, but a
  >successful boycott of all products made by cigarette conglomerates would
  >make America’s cupboards resemble Mother Hubbard’s.  (Adios, Velveeta nachos.)
  >
  >Modern multinational commerce makes moral superiority difficult.  If
  >Pepsi-Cola is doing business with Burma, then reach for the alternative.
  >Oops, Coca-Cola is on the streets of Nigeria.   When one’s appetizer is
  >outrage du jour, boycotting lunch is a tough assignment, like looking for
  >Captain Boycott in a Baptist-free Disneyland.
  >===============================
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  Danny Kennedy
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