[PEN-L:9579] Michael Jordan and the global economy

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Atlantic Monthly, http://www.theatlantic.com

A new book examines the economic impact of Michael Jordan and shows why his
Airness represents globalism at its most powerful

by Jack Beatty

July 21, 1999

Michael Jordan has the soul of a cash register -- or so Walter LaFeber, a
distinguished Cornell historian, shows in Michael Jordan and the New Global
Capitalism, a trenchant new study of U.S. "cultural imperialism" today.
There is no depth of tackiness to which Jordan will not descend. On a
family visit to Paris, Jordan posed under the Eiffel Tower "wearing Nikes
and promoting McDonalds," LaFeber writes. At the 1992 Olympics Jordan's
huckstering led Dave Anderson of The New York Times to write (including
Charles Barkley in his scorn), they "think they're here representing Nike
instead of the United States." A typical mercenary moment came in game one
of the 1993 NBA championship season. After scoring fifty-five points in the
Bulls' victory over the Phoenix Suns, Jordan delayed joining his teammates
in celebration; instead, still lathered in the sweat of the game, he filmed
a McDonald's ad on the court.

Jordan is a symbol of the new transnational corporation and its power,
through television and advertising, not only to influence global buying
habits, but also to displace the indigenous cultures of other societies
with the American monoculture of sneakers, hamburgers, and celebrity.

LaFeber begins with an account of Michael Jordan's life when it still
belonged to him, setting Jordan's history within the context of
basketball's. All would-be young athletes should know one socially
redeemable fact about Jordan: he was cut from his high school basketball
team in his sophomore year. "I went to my room and I closed the door and I
cried," he told the sportswriter Bob Greene. By his senior year, Jordan had
yet to make an impression on the basketball world; he was not on a list of
the 300 hottest prospects for college recruiters. However, an assistant to
the legendary coach Dean Smith, at the University of North Carolina,
glimpsed Jordan's talent, and the Tar Heels awarded Jordan a scholarship.
By his junior year at Chapel Hill, Jordan was, in the words of Sports
Illustrated's Curry Kirkpatrick, "the finest all-around amateur player in
the world."

"The first NBA game I saw was the one I played in," Jordan told Bob Greene.
In fourteen seasons Jordan led the Bulls to six NBA championships. He did
everything brilliantly, including winning championship series games with
buzzer-beating shots. Above all, he seemed to stay in the air long enough
to change his mind about which shot to take.

But good as Jordan was, he will likely be remembered almost as much for his
relationship with the corporate world, especially Nike, as for his
brilliant playing. At Jordan's first meeting with Nike's young president,
Phil Knight, LaFeber dryly notes, "Jordan announced that in return for his
endorsement he wanted, most of all, an automobile." Ah, such innocence!
Fortune recently estimated that Michael Jordan had a $10 billion impact on
the economy, half of which benefited Nike.

Nike alone could not "globalize" Jordan. That took the new technology of
instant communication symbolized by Ted Turner -- founder of CNN, on which
"foreign" is a banned word -- and Rupert Murdoch, with his satellites and
his television networks on six continents. The novelty of television wore
off for most Americans a generation ago, but not for many millions of
people in less fortunate countries around the world, where the number of
televisions per one hundred people has doubled since 1980. In international
television ads for Wheaties, Hanes underwear, Coca-Cola, Gatorade, and Nike
-- before hundreds of millions of watchers -- Michael Jordan went global.
Chinese schoolchildren now rank him second only to Zhou Enlai as the
greatest figure of the twentieth century.

To be sure, LaFeber says, the United States has long been an exporting
country. But, he notes insightfully, "Standard Oil petroleum and McCormick
harvesters were not uniquely American products; they challenged other
cultures far less in the 1880's than did Nike athletic equipment and its
accompanying advertising life style."

Does it mitigate our distaste for all this that the global cynosure of
Americanness is a very black African-American male? One would feel more
certain of one's answer if Jordan were not such a political eunuch. He says
he avoids taking stands on controversial issues for fear of offending the
customers of his corporate sponsors -- the corporations that pay for his
$1000 bets on golf puts.

We used to scare the world, Gore Vidal has observed. Now we entertain it.
Sports, sneakers, and hamburgers are our competitive advantage in world
trade. Wal-Mart may be about to enter the British market. Thousands of
cafés close in Paris as the long family lunch loses out to fast food. In
Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, wurst sandwiches yield to Big Macs. This
is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a made-in-America belch.


Louis Proyect

(http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)