Was there something missing from the frustrated rhetoric of U.S. lawmakers, who appeared so shocked that Team USA’s Olympic uniforms were made in China? La Stampa columnist Gianni Riotta writes that the ‘moral of the tale’ is that, like their China-made uniforms, Team USA, ‘comprised of an interweaving of distant cultures,’ reflects the very basis of American strength.
For La Stampa, Gianni Riotta writes in small part:
All hell may break loose: in Washington, if populist propaganda was an Olympic sport, all records would have already been broken. The Democratic Senate leader, Harry Reid declared: “If they have to wear nothing but a singlet with ‘USA’ on it painted by hand, that’s what they should wear.” Republican House Speaker Boehner rumbled: “You’d think they’d know better.” His democratic rival, Mrs. Pelosi, added: “They represent the very best and they’re so excellent, it’s all so beautiful … And they should be wearing uniforms made in America.” The festival of tall tales also enlisted Bernie Sanders, the only American socialist senator, for whom the choice of uniforms puts millions of jobs at risk, while Senator Scott Brown accuses China of commercial trickery, and put forward a law under which in 2014, the athletes would wear Made in USA uniforms.
If you don’t like baggy trousers, pleated skirts and double-breasted blazers, then do the math with your iPad – a product dreamed up in Silicon Valley. Made in China by workers earning less than $36 a day (€30), an iPad 3 costs $299, and an iPad 4 $499. The magazine the Atlantic has estimated how much iPads would cost if they were produced entirely in the United States, by workers earning $35 an hour (it takes about 9 hours to assemble an iPad), and adding the cost of labor, insurance and mining – for instance, mineral extraction in a U.S. state – the elegant Made in USA tablet would cost three times the price of those Made in China. The textile industry has different parameters, but even the controversial Team USA uniforms would cost about twice as much.
For good or ill, China and United States remain partners, and the day of their showdown – which will happen – is not at hand. The moral of the story, from which the U.S. lawmakers take pride, is that Ralph Lauren, the designer who has turned all Americans into refined WASPS – White Anglo Saxon Protestants dressed up as privileged students of noble Ivy League universities – was born Ralph Lipschitz, to a poor Jewish family in the Bronx, and reinvented himself as a master of the aristocratic style. This is the hidden strength behind Team USA, which is comprised of an interweaving of distant cultures. If the symbolic Christmas song White Christmas was written by the Jewish musician Izrail Moiseevic Bejlin, better known by his nome de plume Irving Berlin, why on earth shouldn’t one hear the Star Spangled Banner after being awarded an Olympic gold medal while wearing a uniform tailored by a capable Chinese seamstress? What could be more “American”? But don’t expect demagogues doped up in an election-year frenzy to understand this.
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