Timothy J. O’Brien
Buzzanco Fall 2006
Walter La Feber, Michael Jordan and the New Global Capitalism . New York: Norton,
1999,191 pages.
La Feber’s monograph’s concerns soft power. He uses Michael Jordan, basketball, Nike and post 1970s technology to show how American corporations and culture have newly defined and dominated the global economic battlefield. La Feber correctly asserts and shows that the battlefield is not over imperialism versus antiimperialism or civilization versus civilization but that it’s all about capital versus culture.
As his title suggests La Feber uses Jordan’s basketball and more importantly his endorsement career to show how transnational corporations exploited technology to cement their products grip across the globe. While Jordan is known throughout the world as a basketball superstar and corporate pitchman for Nike, McDonalds, Gatorade and more, La Feber’s portrayal, while not sharp tongued, shows Jordan as the uncaring, selfserving money grubbing multi-millionaire.
Several examples of Jordan’s behavior provide good insight into his transformation into the symbol of American culture and capitalism and also as the face of technology driven marketing in the twentieth century. The pitfalls of global capitalism are also demonstrated by the actions of the corporations Jordan represents. In the beginning of his career as an uncaring corporate shill Jordan comes off as a naïve county bumpkin. During the negotiations of his first endorsement contract instead of asking for a large sum of money Jordan requested “an automobile.”
La Feber points out how advertising leveraged new technology that crammed products down the throats of consumers all around the world. One key invention was the
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digital broadcast satellite (DBS) which was first launched by NASA in May 1974. The satellite enabled the broadcast of signals into previously isolated areas. Advanced technology like DBS led people all around the world into a new era globalization that was funded by advertising. La Feber notes that in 1980 the average American was exposed to 1,600 advertising messages per day but just ten years later it was up to 3,000.
One of the effects of this ad based globalization was the emergence of Michael
Jordan as a world champion pitchman. As La Feber weaves Jordan’s life story through tales of the corporatization of world markets, the reader discovers what a selfish self centered race traitor bastard Jordan is. Particularly galling is Jordan’s insensitivity to inner city African Americans who were getting killed over their Nike Air Jordans. Jordan didn’t even bother to think about the problem his overpriced shoes were causing as he told one reporter that parents of kids who got robbed of their Air Jordans should just tell their kids that Michael Jordan would buy them a new pair. This flippant attitude showed that Jordan served his corporate master and did not feel obligated to do anything to bring attention the shitty hand that African Americans were dealt in America.
When Jesse Jackson pointed out that a third of the shoes were sold to blacks but that Nike had few black managers and didn’t deposit funds into black banks, Jordan did not say anything. The sweatshop issue hit Nike hard, but where was Michael Jordan? On his way to the bank to cash his twenty million dollar Nike check. Did he care if Asian laborers were being paid pennies an hour? Not Michael Jordan, who apparently couldn’t see any connection between sweatshop conditions that exploited people of color and the legacy of slavery in America.
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La Feber wrote a great book that demonstrated soft power unfortunately Jordan’s personality will leave the reader retching.
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