Government contractors are under the impression that lawmakers in the U.S. watch local TV and read The Washington Post; they must be otherwise, what is the point of running ads that try to create a feel good image about a company in a market with no voting representation in Congress?
I was watching the local news Friday (I like Channel 9 probably because it’s what my grandmother watched but also, I think, because they are not prone to sweeps month stunts) and during the broadcast there was a commercial from Halliburton which has recently come under attack for, among other things, under-delivering on contracts and over-pricing gasoline it is selling to the U.S. Armed Forces in Iraq. This :60 spot was a miracle of modern spin designed to burnish Halliburton’s image as a company that goes in and does the tough work while still having a heart.
Middle-aged white guy, dressed in khakis and an open-necked casual shirt, sits on a balcony or deck and speaks directly to the camera about how he knew he would face some tough challenges when he took the job with Halliburton nearly 10 years ago.
Cut to:
Footage of oil drill fires in Kuwait as white guy talks about the company “putting out some fires”
Cut to:
Footage of blowing sand and vehicles as white guy talks about the company “having a bit of a tough time with supply lines”
Cut to:
Footage of soldiers in desert BDUs lining up for chow with a sign in the background that says ‘Tuesday is Cheeseburger Night!’ as white guy intones: “but the best thing of all has been serving our troops overseas good old American food.”
Cut back to white guy still sitting in the chair on the balcony or deck as he gets ‘choked up’ about how that is the best thing they do.
OK, this guy is a horrible actor. He must be a real middle-manager at Halliburton because if he’s not, someone should burn his SAG card.
The more important question this raises in my mind, though, is: why is are U.S. armed forces contracting out to a private company to do a job the quartermaster corps has been doing for nearly 150 years? Last time I checked all branches of the military had not only their own supply methods but also their own cooks, so what are we doing paying a private contractor for this? Sad, really, that we can’t even feed our own troops any more. Perhaps until we can, we ought to leave them at home.
And another random thought, completely unrelated to the above: who decides when something is “collectible?” Are they the same people who decided that “green is the new black?”