{"id":84,"date":"2004-03-07T12:20:10","date_gmt":"2004-03-07T17:20:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/?p=84"},"modified":"2004-03-07T12:20:10","modified_gmt":"2004-03-07T17:20:10","slug":"supply-and-demand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/2004\/03\/supply-and-demand\/","title":{"rendered":"Supply and demand"},"content":{"rendered":"

Government contractors are under the impression that lawmakers in the U.S. watch local TV and read The Washington Post<\/span>; 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?<\/p>\n

I was watching the local news Friday (I like Channel 9<\/a> 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<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

\nRandom Backyard Scene: Day<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Cut to:<\/p>\n

Footage of oil drill fires in Kuwait as white guy talks about the company “putting out some fires”<\/p>\n

Cut to: <\/p>\n

Footage of blowing sand and vehicles as white guy talks about the company “having a bit of a tough time with supply lines”<\/p>\n

Cut to:<\/p>\n

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.”<\/p>\n

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.\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\n

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?”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-84","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-thoughts","7":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=84"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}