Editor, Washington Post
I was sorry to read about Ben & Jerry's ice cream being bought by multinational Unilever (13 April), and surprised that the Post would
disseminate the news through Frank Ahrens column (C01) that happily
danced on the grave on socially conscious business practices.
"Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!" is both an inappropriate and unprofessional tone, and I find its
repetition with caps and exclamation points
("HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!") to be offensive. Certainly he has no right using
'sanctimonious' in his column, especially after deriding egalitarian pay scales as an 'airheaded policy' and a 'do-gooder socialist salary
structure'.
People who support Ben & Jerry's are not just
'self-satisfied limousine liberals' who are 'eating your way to world peace'. We believe that in consuming you can give something back & not
save the world but show a glimmer of social conscience.
I'd rather be a 'hippie-dippy, lefty-loony' consumer than a bedfellow of
this author, who can only be described as a capitalist pig. I have no intention of pulling my
'VW Microbuses of self-righteous fervor into the parking spaces of global capitalism', especially when it means parking
on top of exploited peoples from other countries to buy goods made in sweatshops that have pay scales appropriate to modern business.*
'Give peace a chance' is not pretentious, and is a better statement of values than anything spewed out by the
robber-baron business ethics of Ahren.
Sincerely,
Paul
- Dr Paul Leighton
- Dept of Sociology, Eastern Michigan University
