Do As I Say.....Not As I Do: Bono Meets The Fashion Biz

This is just too precious.

The headline on an article in today's Wall Street Journal reads Out of Africa, Into Asia, with the subheadline "A brand started by Bono and his wife to boost African manufacturing now produces mainly in China."

Here are the lead sentences in the half-page Journal piece,

"Five years ago, U2 front man Bono and his wife, Ali Hewson, founded fashion brand Edun with the lofty mission of revitalizing apparel manufacturing in sub-Saharan Africa.

But when Edun designer Sharon Wauchob unveils her new vision for the label Saturday, most of the clothes on the runway- some featuring African touches like beads from Kenya- will be produced in China.

It's a big about-face for Edun, which launched to great fanfare but quickly ran into problems with soucring and delivery. Shipments from Africa arrived late, and retailers complained about the clothes' design and fit, leading to poor sales."

I guess even the wealthy liberalati eventually succumb to economic reality when it's their own money at risk.

Hewson is described as admitting,

"that she and her husband, known for his advocacy of debt relief in addition to his music, were naive about what it takes to build a fashion brand.

"We focused too much on the mission in the beginning. It's the clothes, it's the product. It's a fashion company. That needs to be first and foremost," Ms. Hewson says. "The aesthetic we always knew would be important...but we didn't realize how difficult it was going to be to achieve quality." "

You have to laugh at this precious arrogance.

Hewson and Bono apparently thought that his fame and their money would simply cause barriers to fall, existing problems to vanish, and sales of their mission-based company to magically blossom.

Mind you, the initial problems weren't even about margin, i.e., Bono and Hewson making filthy lucre, or not making it, on healthy sales of quality merchandise.

No, the couple and their managers found that African-sourced product just wouldn't sell. Period.

The article contains too many funny passages to quote them all. Suffice to say, you can't make up stuff this good.

Bono and Hewson invested $20MM into Edun, then sold 49% of the firm to LVMH Moet Hennessy for only $7.8MM. How's that for good business sense so far?

But the firm now has a new CEO, Janice Sullivan, formerly president at Liz Claiborne's DKNY Jeans unit. She relates a priceless story involving a planned fashion show,

"I felt like a schoolmarm," says Ms. Sullivan. "I sounded like his math teacher saying, 'OK now, Bono, let's just regroup here. We are having a fashion show. Show is the second word. Fashion is the first word." Ultimately, they compromised: the show is taking place in a semi-outdoor space in Chelsea."

The article concludes with this line,

" "So you can see how this brand, in the wrong hands, could go haywire." says Ms. Sullivan."

No doubt implying if the majority owners were the managers, Edun would be an endless financial sinkhole.

Figures.

Fact is, Ms. Hewson's reported belief, along with her husband, in making the concept work, the African-sourcing just isn't. Despite her insistence that the brand will return to more African fashion over time, we'd all be forgiven for waiting to see it to believe it.

One very much suspects that other companies without Bono's money and fame aren't doing this concept because it simply isn't economically feasible.

You don't see Ms. Sullivan denying that, or rushing back to Africa, do you?

Glenn Beck & PETA On Al Gore's Hypocrisy

Al Gore's hypocrisy is beginning to become more apparent.

First it was Bjorn Lomborg's challenges to many claims in Warm-Boy Al's (liberal) prize-winning documentary. Al has been ducking a direct confrontation with the esteemed researcher for years.

Next, it was the subtle change from 'global warming' to 'climate change,' because, well, the earth hasn't actually been uniformly warming according to Al's schedule.

Then it became more well-known that Al has made well over $100MM from investments which benefited from his false cries of coming environmental destruction.

Now, PETA is after the Warm One to go vegetarian. Glenn Beck provides an interview with the head of PETA in this hilarious clip on YouTube.



Strange bedfellows, indeed.

But I think the PETA head is on target in labeling Al a hypocrite for ignoring what would be a simple and easy lifestyle change in keeping with his alleged concern for the environment.

How's that for an "inconvenient truth?"

Contradiction In Terms: Obama & "Fiscal Responsibility"

It just doesn't get much better than this for hypocrisy.

Wonderboy pushes through a $1T 'stimulus' spending bill, frightening voters into believing it is necessary.

Then he turns around and declares that.....we have a deficit problem!

Ya think?

Wonderboy now puts his buffoonish VP, the hapless Joe Biden, in charge of a fiscal responsibility commission.

They even had a 'summit' yesterday.

Ooooh. How impressive.

This administration enacts the largest single spending bill in American history, then promptly changes its mind and swears that we have spent too much money.

And then declares, completely nonsensically, that this will be cut in half in four years. Something many economist have already pronounced extremely unlikely.

This is change we can believe in? Hardly.

More like totally confused and rudderless misleadership.

What did you expect from an inexperienced lawyer with no serious life stresses or accomplishments?

Billy Jo Moyers- Government Informant

The Wall Street Journal recently published an editorial detailing the behaviors of one-time LBJ press secretary, aide and fellow Texan, Billy Joe Moyers, now known as uber-liberal "journalist" Bill Moyers, frequently of PBS, during his days in the late Texan's administration.

Despite his current moralizing over all things Republican and conservative, it turns out that Billy Joe committed the sorts of sins as an LBJ aide that, today, would get him lynched by his liberal buddies.

As the Journal article noted,

"But as the Post reports in passing, the dossier also reveals that Mr. Moyers -- then a special assistant to LBJ -- requested in 1964 that Hoover's G-men "investigate two other administration figures who were 'suspected as having homosexual tendencies.'"

Amid "bits of dirt on figures such as Martin Luther King," Judge Silberman found a 1964 memo from Mr. Moyers directing Hoover's agents to investigate Barry Goldwater's campaign staff for evidence of homosexual activity. A few weeks before, an LBJ aide named Walter Jenkins had been arrested in a men's bathroom, and Mr. Silberman wrote that Mr. Moyers and his boss evidently wanted leverage in the event Goldwater tried to use the liaison against them. (He didn't, as it happened.)

When that episode became public after Mr. Silberman testified, an irate Mr. Moyers called him and, with typical delicacy, accused him of falling for forged CIA memos. Mr. Silberman offered to study the matter and, should Mr. Moyers's allegations pan out, he would publicly exonerate him. "There was a pause on the line and then he said, 'I was very young. How will I explain this to my children?' And then he rang off."

Memories are short in Washington, and Mr. Moyers has gone on to promote himself as a political moralist, routinely sermonizing about what he claims are abuses of power by his ideological enemies. Since 9/11, he has been particularly intense in criticizing President Bush for his antiterror policies, such as warrantless wiretapping against al Qaeda.

Yet the historical record suggests that when Mr. Moyers was in a position of actual power, he was complicit in FBI dirt-digging against U.S. citizens solely for political purposes. As Judge Silberman put it in 2005, "I have always thought that the most heinous act in which a democratic government can engage is to use its law enforcement machinery for political ends."

Mr. Moyers told us through a spokeswoman that he "never heard of the Valenti matter until this story and had nothing to add to it." He also pointed to a 1975 Newsweek article in which he wrote that he learned of the LBJ-Hoover relationship in "the quickly fading days of my innocence." In the Nixon days, this was called a nondenial denial."

It's just too rich, isn't it? Billy Joe now claims to have no memory of trying to smear Valenti, or anyone else. And this from a guy whose made a career for the last eight years out of making moral judgments on fellow Texans George Bush and Karl Rove.

The ultimate hypocrite. But then, aren't most liberal Democrats?

Liberal Democrats & School Choice

The Wall Street Journal recently printed an editorial by Clint Bolick, president of the Alliance for School Choice. In it, Bolick discussed a now-familiar phenomenon- Democratic Senators, Vice Presidents and/or Presidents who have opposed school vouchers/choice, but send their own children to expensive private schools in the District of Columbia.

The list reads like a Who's Who of Democratic Presidential contenders: the Clintons, of course, John Edwards, Al Gore (himself educated in private school by his own Senator father), and, potentially, Obama Bin Baden. The last is somewhat of a mystery, in that his children attend private Chicago school, but he hasn't yet had the opportunity to oppose a voucher bill in Congress.

Ironically, former Presidential candidate Tom Vilsack, governor of Iowa, sent his children to public schools, and supported school choice legislation in his state. And, unbelievably, at least to me, Joe Biden of Delaware sends his children to private school, but supported school choice for the general public.

It continues to amaze me how prevalent this Democratic behavior is. It seems to me to be near the height of arrogance, for so-called populists to stiff arm their constituents on getting to choose a quality education for their children, but then removing their own precious children from the D.C., or home state/city public school system, and safely enrolling them in an expensive private institution.

If memory serves, when Mary Landrieu, Democratic Senator from Louisiana, was accosted by a constituent who asked her why she also did this, Landrieu responded with something like, 'because you might get confused and make a bad choice for your own child.'

If you're going to try to rebuild the social welfare state, at least look like you feel it's good enough for your own family to participate. But sending your children to private school while opposing any choice whatsoever for the poor, allegedly downtrodden voters you claim to champion seems awfully curious.

Let's hope that in the next election cycle, this serious hypocrisy comes home to roost with all the relevant, guilty liberal Democratic candidates, for Senate or the White House.