IN DEFENSE OF JACK CAFFERTY'S "JINGOISTIC" COMMENTS ON CNN

First the comments:

"We continue to import their junk with the lead paint on them and the poisoned pet food and export... jobs to places where you can pay workers a dollar a month to turn out the stuff that we're buying from Wal-Mart. So I think our relationship with China has certainly changed. I think they're basically the same bunch of goons and thugs they've been for the last 50 years."

Yesterday Chinese-Americans and Chinese ex-pats living in the U.S. protested against CNN commentator Jack Cafferty in L.A. and Atlanta.

Touchy, touchy. Cafferty is right and these people-- particularly not the Chinese-Americans-- shouldn't have a beef with him. But they're demanding CNN fire him. Did anyone see if they had their American flag pins on? Chinese flag pins?

The protesters lined Sunset Boulevard from Cahuenga Boulevard to Wilcox Avenue chanting "Fire Cafferty" and "CNN liar" and singing the Chinese national anthem and other patriotic songs. They waved Chinese, American and Taiwanese flags and directed their anger at the news channel's dark glass tower.

"It's really unacceptable," said John He, an organizer of the event. "It maliciously attacks all Chinese. This would not be accepted if it was directed at any other ethnic group."

Fact is, ethnic Chinese people are protesting all over the world-- and it isn't all directly towards Cafferty or CNN. They're angry that western media has been unsympathetic to the Chinese point of view on Tibet and they're angry over talk of an Olympics boycott. Today
s NY Times reports that in China there is talk of a different kind of boycott, one "against American chains like McDonald’s and Kentucky Fried Chicken."
I just noticed that my old usenet wars comrade, Milt Shook, also picked up on this story. And, like me, he realizes Cafferty's position should be defended. He goes though the speech phrase by phrase to do just that:

Do we import Chinese-made junk? Have you ever been inside a Wal-Mart, or any "dollar store" in the country? Yes, we do import a lot of crap from China, and most of it is of low quality, which is why it costs a dollar.

Have the Chinese been reckless with their quality control? Well, yes, of course they have. Lead paint on toys that children might put into their mouths; toys that turn into roofies if swallowed; pet food that killed many a pet (full disclosure; I can't prove it, but I'm pretty sure that's how my son's cat died last year).

Do the Chinese take advantage of lower labor standards to put out their junk, and sell it to us by the boatload? Well, yeah. There are factories over there that serve as de facto slave quarters, for Chrissakes. And why should that surprise anyone? How the hell do you think they make a spatula that can be sold to you for a dollar, with everyone along the supply chain making money?

In other words, there is nothing untrue in what Jack Cafferty said, and these Chinese-Americans who are protesting have a lot of nerve, if nothing else. If they really want to protest something, how about protesting the shitty conditions under which the Chinese workers labor under? How about demanding that the United States start demanding that the Chinese government stop cracking down on people who dare express themselves? If you don't like the truth, then change the truth of the situation. But don't blame Jack Cafferty.

We have shipped boatloads of jobs to China, China does make a lot of junk, and the government over there is oppressive, and they do act like a bunch of thugs. That's not an insult to "the Chinese," those are stone cold facts.

Dave Gibson at News By Us also points out that Truth is getting lost in these protests and he also examined the facts that show that Cafferty wasn't making anything up or exaggerating at all.

Because our Congress and president have deleted the federal Treasury and bankrupted our grandchildren’s future with earmarks and the ongoing war in Iraq (which has already cost $500 billion), this nation is being crushed under our own debt. The National Debt now stands at $9.3 trillion. Since September 2006, the debt has been growing by $1.6 billion a day. In order to keep the government running, we borrow from foreign nations. In particular, China now owns 33 percent of our foreign-held debt.

According to the statistics kept on foreign trade by the U.S. Census Bureau, the U.S. had a $256 billion trade deficit with China in 2007 alone. That figure has doubled just since 2003. Our trade deficit with China has continued to grow by leaps and bounds since 1986, when we imported only $6 billion more than we exported to China.

We all remember the reports thousands of pets poisoned last year by wheat gluten imported from China. The food product conduct the highly toxic chemical melamine which is used in China as a fertilizer, but was banned in the United States. Though very dangerous, Chinese farmers continue to use it as a cheap alternative to safer products.
In addition to our pets, many of our children have been poisoned by Chinese-made products.

Shortly before Christmas, the product known as Aqua Dots was recalled when several children in the United States as well as abroad became violently ill and slipped into comas after sucking on or swallowing the tiny beads. The “Dots” were manufactured in China with a chemical which converts to GHB (gamma-hydroxy butyrate), commonly known as the ‘date-rape drug,’ once ingested. The craft toy was sold mostly at Wal-Mart and Toys “R” Us stores.

The day before the much talked-about Aqua Dots recall, the government announced a recall of 405,000 toys, most of which were toy cars due to toxic levels of lead. Included in the recall were 308,000 Pull-Back Action Toy Cars imported and sold by Dollar General, wind-up toys, music boxes, toy robots, Winnie-the-Pooh Spinning Tops, and 7,200 “Big Red” wagons imported and sold by Northern Tool & Equipment Co.

In September 2007, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission recalled one million Simplicity brand cribs which were made in China. The recall came after a 6-month-old and a 9-month-old baby became pinned and died in the cribs due to a defect. Several more children became trapped in the cribs but survived.

The following list represents only a small fraction of the imported Chinese products recalled in 2007:
-baby overalls (imported by Samarra Brothers, metal snaps contained toxic levels of lead)
-ceramic heaters (Family Dollar Stores imported the heaters which overheated and gave off toxic smoke)
-hair dryers (Metropolis Beauty imported travel hair dryers which had no electric shock protection devices as required for all hand-held dryers)
-remote controls (Best Buy recalled 10,000 Insignia DVD Player remotes after they were found to overheat and cause burns)
-children’s jewelry (rings imported by Rachel Rose Kidz which contained high levels of lead)
-batteries (JAKKS Pacific recalled 240,000 battery packs made for toy cars after reports started pouring in about the batteries bursting into flames)
-lamps (Currey &Company imported lamps with defective light sockets that presented fire and shock hazards)
-art sets (Toys “R” Us recalled 27,000 Wooden Coloring Cases which were found to contain toxic levels of lead)
-bicycles (imported by Target Stores were recalled after it was discovered that the bike frames were easily broken)
-easels (Distant Learning School Supply imported chalkboard easels which contained toxic levels of lead)
-baby seat (Infant Bouncer Seats imported by Oeuf LLC were recalled after reports of the metal frames breaking began to surface)
-toothpaste (the FDA discovered that many brands of Chinese-made toothpaste contained diethylene glycol (antifreeze) and caused kidney and liver failure)
-tires (Foreign Tire Sales in New Jersey recalled 450,000 tires manufactured in Hangzhou, China posed a serious safety hazard due to tread separation)
-key chains (Dollar General recalled 400,000 key chains which contained toxic levels of lead)
-heaters (Holmes Group was forced to recall 300,000 heaters which contained faulty wiring and presented a serious fire hazard)
-baby clothes (Disney Stores imported sleepwear which failed to meet U.S. flammability standards)

According to China Labor Watch, 80 percent of the $22.3 billion of toys sold in this country are manufactured in China. All of the major U.S. toy companies have turned to cheap Chinese labor to produce their toys. As a result, American factory jobs are becoming non-existent and our children are being poisoned. The importation of so many cheaply-made toys from China is in fact a lose-lose situation for Americans.

On Feb. 8, 2004, the Washington Post ran an article which reported: “More than 80 percent of the 6,000 factories in Wal-Mart’s worldwide database of suppliers are in China. Wal-Mart estimates it spent $15 billion on Chinese-made products last year, accounting for nearly one-eighth of all Chinese exports to the United States. If the company that Sam Walton built with his “Made in America” ad campaign were itself a separate nation, it would rank as China’s fifth-largest export market, ahead of Germany and Britain.”

In that same article, Post reporters Peter S. Goodman and Phillip P. Pan interviewed a Chinese labor activist Li Qiang. He said that factories that supply Wal-Mart and manufacture goods for American companies such as Dell and Mattel require workers to work 80 hours a week, while paying them $75 to $110 a month.

The minimum wage in China varies from each province but ranges from about $35 to $120 a month.

Cafferty went on to describe the Chinese government as “basically the same bunch of goons and thugs they’ve been for the last 50 years.”

Considering China’s abysmal record on human rights, their role in the ongoing massacre taking place in Darfur, and their policies of oppression toward Tibet and Burma… How could any thinking person disagree with him?

No one should ask Jack Cafferty to apologize for his words, doing so would be similar to asking an historian to apologize to the Nazis.