it wasn't ingenious at all. it was a mistake on the part of someone who only casually followed the news. what this kid missed is that this IS how capitalism works. what people who are outraged by Nike and Nike alone miss, is that this is how capitalism works. that it encourages outrage on the part of those who learn about it is a sad statement.
and what is funny, is that if you were to press them, from interviewing people from staff to executive level managers, i'm sure most of them would acknowledge that there is a contradiction between the image a corporation exudes and the daily reality of their corporate lives is readily apparent to almost anyone i've ever talked to. they live in that milieu every single day and the critique of management and executives is a lexicon familiar to most USers.
what the demonization of nike does is encourage people to think it's THAT company, not their own or not that one. and this is typical for USers, too, since they reveal this tendency on opinion surveys (eg., the health care system sucks, but my doc is mostly okay)
it's not much different than what ehrenreich identifies in _fear of falling_ where the professional strata projects onto laborers all that is racist, sexist, repulsive so they can maintain a pristine image for themselves. see, likewise, the demonization of the south and "those dumb workers" exhibited here on this list more frequently than i care to count.
kelley