Canadian Politics Today

This is fairly ridiculous.


First off, I think everybody would agree that Nike has the wish to manage their brand as they see fit.   And I think they're capable of making marketing decisions on their own. They've been somewhat successful in that area over the years.  Nike sells tens of billions of dollars of product every year; Ted Cruz lost the Republican nomination to a crook with a comb-over. I don't think Nike needs any branding advice from Ted "Totally not a robot" Cruz.


With that out of the way, a few more observations:

 -the kind of people who are offended by this are already boycotting Nike. Remember? All those people who said they were never going to buy another Nike product after Nike hired Colin Kaepernick as a representative?  "We said we were boycotting before, but now we're really really boycotting!" What are they going to do, refused to buy Nike products in their afterlife too?   

 -the kind of people who are outraged over this are probably not people who buy a lot of Nike products anyway. Ted Cruz might have some Nike golf shirts in his closet, but mostly the people who are mad about this are angry fat old rednecks whose typical workout is lifting forkfuls of deep fried fast food into their mouths.  Old white Deep South evangelicals... statistically speaking the most obese people on earth aside from some of the Pacific Islanders.  Until Nike starts a new line of electric mobility scooters, I don't think this is really Nike's demographic anyway.

 -I imagine Nike did the same calculus they did when they hired Colin Kaepernick in the first place. As in: comparing potential sales gains among "woke" millenials vs sales losses among old fat dumb rednecks, and decided it was an easy call.

 -the shoe is being billed as celebrating Betsy Ross, but I don't think that's really the case. People see that flag, they don't think "Betsy Ross", they think of the 13 Colonies era.  And the 13 Colonies era wasn't that great for black people.  The "Betsy Ross flag" shoes were probably only going to really appeal to people who long for simpler times. "This country was better back before all this (black/gay/immigrants/women's lib/etc) stuff."

 -if anybody can get their hands on a pair of these, it might be a cool collectors item some day!


Ted Cruz and others who are feigning indignation over this are just trying to wrap themselves in the flag and rile up dumb-people... more or less the same kind of voters who also fall for **** like "the kids ain't even allowed to pray in school anymore."



 -k