THE BOYCOTT DU JOUR

[sbillenness@xxxxxxxx]

THE BOYCOTT DU JOUR                                    
By  Martin F. Nolan, Boston Globe Columnist
Boston Globe, August 6, 1997
	
In 1881, an Irish rental agent, Captain Charles Boycott, worked for the
earl of Erne, an absentee landlord with holdings in County Mayo. The
Irish Land League, led by the nationalist leader Charles Stewart Parnell,
urged lower rents for farmers.

When Boycott refused to reduce rents for his neighbors, they ostracized
him, cutting off all economic contact:  no servants, no farm-hands, no
commerce, no mail. His name stuck, and not just because of Mayo men?s
fabled attitude for grudges.

In this century, the boycott was an effective weapon against apartheid in
South Africa.  As serious, hard work, the boycott is a compelling
expression of moral revulsion.  As simply a badge of moral superiority, a
boycott can be ludicrously ineffective.  

Not so in Massachusetts, which has dismayed the State Department, a useful
thing to do.   The U.S. ambassador to Indonesia visited Boston to urge
caution on a selective purchasing law aimed at Indonesian abuse of human
rights in East Timor.  A Bay State law affecting Burma is similar to
federal trade sanctions against the Burmese, so the idea of the feds
lecturing the states selectively does not square with the universality of
human rights.

The Southern Baptist Convention, upset at the Walt Disney Co. for the
latter?s toleration of non-Baptist habits, sponsors a boycott to de-fang
the Lion King and to exterminate Mickey Mouse. This effort may be as
effective as the official US boycott of Havana cigars and other Cuban
products some 35 years ago.  That bipartisan effort was supposed to stamp
out godless Communism in this hemisphere.  Castro, like Disney, survives.

On the left, and on the left coast, take Berkeley Calif., please.  In the
San Francisco Chronicle, Elaine Herscher reports that "Berkeley is
boycotting so many things that soon there may be no gasoline  politically
correct enough to run the city?s vehicles."  Arco, Texaco, Mobil, and Shell
gurgle with improper political additives because they trade with the wrong
countries, so what goes into the city?s police cars and fire engines?
Herscher writes:   "Exxon is the only major oil company that?s not on the
banned list.  And that?s no help.  The city is unofficially boycotting
Exxon, too, because of its sluggish response to the...Valdez oil spill that
fouled 700 miles of Alaskan shoreline."

In the 1960s, boycotts were an awkward mix of rectitude and trendiness.  I
covered one of the first events organized to boycott lettuce.   At a
combined rally-cocktail party in a Manhattan townhouse, a famous person
asked me about the effort in which her famous husband was involved: "Isn?t
this a neat idea?"

As politely as I could, I suggested that the men who mined the diamonds
adorning her wrist and throat would heartily envy the conditions under
which the farm workers of Cesar Chavez harvested agribiz lettuce.  But
South Africa was not in vogue then.  Kern County in California was.

In the 1980s, I wandered into an urban food cooperative out of curiosity,
not hunger, which was just as well, because the boycott wall was as big as
some the countries being boosted or boycotted.   In ideological detail no
pesticide could penetrate, broadsides saluted or denounced Guatemalan rice,
Nicaraguan coffee, and Salvadoran bananas.  

Guilt by association is Senator Joseph McCarthy?s legacy to the boycotting
impulse.  Cigarettes now rank with Communism as a bad idea, but a
successful boycott of all products made by cigarette conglomerates would
make America?s cupboards resemble Mother Hubbard?s.  (Adios, Velveeta nachos.)

Modern multinational commerce makes moral superiority difficult.  If
Pepsi-Cola is doing business with Burma, then reach for the alternative.
Oops, Coca-Cola is on the streets of Nigeria.   When one?s appetizer is
outrage du jour, boycotting lunch is a tough assignment, like looking for
Captain Boycott in a Baptist-free Disneyland.
===============================