It's been discovered that the uniforms the U.S. Olympic athletes will wear in London were all made in China. (By a guy named Ral-Fu Lo-rong, it seems.) Naturally, a lot of people have become exercised by this news. Indeed, as so many are already asking, "what were they [the USOC] thinking?"
One answer might be that they weren't thinking at all. In an environment where outsourcing of jobs is an almost daily matter of discussion in the media, and when a "made in America" movement has gained quite a lot of traction, to have made a conscious decision to buy Chinese for this patriotic flagship event is pretty blindingly stupid. Not to have considered where the clothing was manufactured is equally as dumb.
If the Committee was thinking, presumably they were focused on the bottom line: could China produce more cheaply? Perhaps they were blinded by the desire to get a "designer" involved. That would seem to have backfired -- these uniforms are really dorky looking, and should make our athletes a laughingstock at the opening ceremonies. But while we're talking about the designer - shouldn't Lauren have had the foresight to think about "made in America," even if the USOC didn't?
The USOC's blunder is just one of those things - it will blow over with no lasting effect. But its object lesson is that corporate types (for that in essence is what USOC folks are) can't be left isolated in their profit-oriented bubbles, they need adult supervision to do the right thing. Executives at Wells Fargo are learning that today, too.
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