>Yet there's a strange selectivity in Klein's examples that leaves you
>wondering if she's told the whole story. She spends immense amounts of time
>analyzing the ''cool'' brands of the early 90's -- Starbucks, Microsoft,
>Nike -- but fails to train her microscope on such industries as tobacco,
>liquor, financial services and petroleum (except Shell), none of which have
>been shy about branding in recent decades.
She does go after DuMaurier for their sponsorship of a tennis tournament - but my impression is that, unlike mushy liberals, she's no particularly enemy of smoke or drink. "Except Shell" is a big exception, since it gets a lot of attention in the book. And she goes further than many writers would when she points out that Chevron got contracts that Shell lost, and Chevron is hardly a step up in the moral universe.
>And there are sections, particularly where Klein ventures into
>macroeconomics, that cry out for greater rigor. In discussing what she
>portrays as a decline in the American job market, for example, Klein avoids
>the debate over increased productivity,
Insofar as outsourcing in Indonesia raises reported productivity, it's hard to make this claim.
> as well as the fact that small
>businesses, rather than brand-crazed multinationals, have been the principal
>engine of job growth for many years.
The small biz claim has been pretty well refuted, so it's a good thing she didn't make that claim.
Doug