Looking uncomfortable in her guest chair...it was more like doing a never-ending series of tiny up and down bounces...CNBC's Erin Burnett made her regular Friday night appearance on Hardball.
The bobbing and cockeyed smile, I'm guessing, was knowing that in the second half of the interview Chris Mathews was going to launch into the criticism she took after her appearance on his show last Friday night.
I wrote about that appearance (CNBC: Poisoned Goods Worth the Lower Cost, Op-ed 8/15), making wild speculations as to what kind of person Burnett is that she could in essence say: What do they want? Cheap and safe? If you want cheap toys for you children don't expect them to safe; that will drive up the price.
It was as if she were saying the price is uber alles, and cheap is more important than your kid chowing down on leaded paint or breaking his three-year-old teeth by chomping on B-B magnets.
BTW, swallow enough B-B magnets and they join forces causing intestinal blockage. Omigawd that must hurt! And, it's dangerous. Just thinking about it gives me intestinal utsies.
Burnett said on the August 10th Hardball, "You know, if China were to revalue its currency or China is to start making, say, toys that don't have lead in them or food that isn't poisonous, their costs of production are going to go up, and that means prices at Wal-Mart here in the United States are going to go up, too. So I would say China is our greatest friend right now."
Many people took umbrage at that. So many in fact, that the second half of the interview began with Matthews (no flirting like last week) saying that they should comment on the negative comments commenters had made about her comments on the previous week's show.
Here's where the nervous bouncing began to slow down, and the peculiar smile became more genuine. For all I know, she's always bouncingly nervous on air. I'd never seen her before tonight, and had only read what she said on the 8/10 Hardball.
One of the worst parts, I liked Burnett in spite of the callous, uncaring way she came off with her previous statements.
She's attractive, enthusiastic about her business reporting, and perky -- but not too perky. Like Lou Grant of the "Mary Tyler Moore Show", I hate perky. She looks like the kind of woman it might be fun to have lunch with or go shopping.
She tried, she really tried to tame down what she said the previous week, but it still came out pretty much the same.
It went something like: What do you expect? Cheap is cheap, and if you want the Chinese to use the same standards in their manufacturing as we do in ours, then you're going to have to pay for it.
No kidding. Golly gee. Too much to expect that the Chinese can't figure out a way to make safe toys that would only up the ante a penny or two per toy. What crap! They don't pay decent wages; couldn't they pop for unleaded paint?
I'm wondering why anybody, any where on Earth is still making paint with lead in it. I'm pretty sure unleaded paint formulas aren't state secrets, and I can't imagine that they are that more expensive to produce than the leaded variety.
Burnett gave it the old college try. She gets a point and a half for that.
She was trying to tell a truth; a very ugly truth. Unfortunately, she didn't choose her words carefully the first time around. Even the second time around the words were pretty much the same with the same meaning, buy crap...get crap. Only this time she left out the "poisoned" part.
Even though she and Matthews ran down the litany of toxic Chinese products that have been recalled during the last month or two, the most recent being baby bibs pulled off the shelves by Toy R Us, because of their lead content.
Sandy Sand began her writing career while raising three children and doing public relations work for Women's American ORT (Organization for Rehabilitation through Training). That led to a job as a reporter for the San Fernando Valley Chronicle, a (more...)
The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of this website or its editors.
Erin Brunett is attractive, but she looks like a high schooler. Viewers are supposed to trust what she says, heartless or not? That's Central Casting for you.
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Sandy Sand (198 articles, 0 quicklinks, 227 diaries, 1548 comments [2 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Monday, Aug 20, 2007 at 2:00:31 PM
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