NAME THE PRESIDENT CONTEST
Face it: Just saying the words President Bush causes many of our readers to gag. Typical is Lois Phillips Hudson, who writes: “Though I might mumble them in a nightmare, never in any waking moment will the words ‘President Bush’ pass my lips.” She suggests his title be “President,” forever in quotes. Out of respect for Lois and millions like her, we are launching a Name the President Contest. Send us your suggestions for an appropriate title for George W. Bush. The last President to steal the office, Rutherford B. Hayes, was forever after known as “His Fraudulency” or “Old 8-7” (referring to the margin by which a special commission wedged him in). His example suggests other dishonorifics, e.g., “His Illegitimacy” or “Old 5-4.” Jack Cousineau offers “pResident,” in print, to denote that Bush merely happens to be the current White House occupant. (Bill Hoover, and Gar Smith, editor of Earth Island Journal–which is changing its style sheet–suggest just plain “Resident.”) Send your suggestions to “In Fact,” The Nation, 33 Irving Place, New York, NY 10003 or ([email protected]). The prize: a T-shirt displaying the Bush-as-Alfred E. Neuman Nation cover to the top five.
McGOVERN REPUBLICANS?
When Republicans, conservatives, even some right-of-center Democrats want to bait a liberal, they often hurl the phrase “McGovern Democrat” at him or her, as if that’s the ultimate in political insults. But the original McGovern Democrat–former Senator George McGovern–has been embraced by the Bush Administration. In December McGovern, who was appointed by President Clinton to be US ambassador to the UN agencies for food and agriculture, submitted his resignation, as is customary for a political appointee. Once the Bushies moved in, Secretary of State Colin Powell phoned McGovern, whose new book–The Third Freedom: Ending Hunger in Our Time–calls for a US-led global initiative to eradicate hunger, and asked him to continue in the Rome-based post, where McGovern has been pressing for a global school lunch program that would cover 300 million children. (McGovern persuaded Clinton to allocate $300 million to kick off this project.) McGovern didn’t lobby to stay on, but he’s pleased he was asked. “I’ve brought Bob Dole into the school lunch idea,” he told us. “Maybe that helped.” Is he going soft on Republicans? “Well, I do have to be more kindly now.” McGovern and the Republicans–now that’s bipartisanship. What next? A job for Jesse Jackson?
STUDENTS TO NIKE: ‘JUST DO IT’
Liza Featherstone writes: On January 9 more than 850 workers went on strike at Kukdong International Mexico, a Korean-owned factory in Atlixco that contracts with Nike to make sweatshirts bearing the logos of the universities of Michigan and Oregon and many other schools. Kukdong workers demanded that management recognize their union and reinstate employees who had been fired for organizing the work stoppage and other protests. This was the highest-profile test yet for the Worker Rights Consortium, the antisweatshop organization founded this past April by US students with labor and human rights activists. After interviewing some thirty workers in Atlixco, the WRC’s investigative team reported “strong grounds for concern” that management had violated the child labor, physical abuse, minimum wage and freedom of association provisions in many universities’ codes of conduct. Nike denounced the WRC investigation, claiming that the group is not “objective,” but student agitation forced the sneaker giant to appoint a mediator, pressure the factory to rehire some of the workers and call for an independent monitor to investigate Kukdong. And also not to cut its ties to the factory afterward. Says Eric Brakken of United Students Against Sweatshops, “I think we’ve scared the fuck out of them.”
