Pepsi gives America the finger

From WorldNetDaily:

Food giant PepsiCo is now fizzing in damage-control mode after the company's president likened the U.S. to a middle finger.

The remarks by Indra Nooyi, an India-born woman who also serves as PepsiCo's chief financial officer, came during a speech Sunday to graduates at Columbia Business School in New York, some of whom took offense as an anti-American attack.

"I'm going to take a look at how the United States is perceived in global business," Nooyi told the audience, saying she'd use the human hand as a model.

Nooyi then went on to say the five major continents in the world can each be represented by a finger on the hand....

She compared Africa to the pinkie, Asia to the thumb, Europe to the index finger and South America to the ring finger.

She said her analogy "leaves the long, middle finger for North America, and in particular, the United States. As the longest of the fingers, it really stands out. The middle finger anchors every function that the hand performs and is the key to all of the fingers working together efficiently and effectively. This is a really good thing, and has given the U.S. a leg up in global business since the end of World War I.

"However, if used inappropriately – just like the U.S. itself, the middle finger can convey a negative message and get us in trouble,"

Her remarks have obviously angered quite a few people. I get so tired of this constant America bashing, simply because we have economic success. Get over it people.

Coverage: Michelle Malkin, WizBang, The Anchoress, Stones Cry Out, Curiouser and Curiouser

Posted by Danny Carlton at May 20, 2005 08:21 AM