From: CommonDreams.org

What’s more American than football, apple pie and Chevrolet? How about cool, brand new radial tires?

That’s what Bridgestone Firestone North American Tire, LLC wants us to believe. The former American, now Japanese-owned, tire manufacturer is spending about $10 million to sponsor this year’s Super Bowl halftime show in Phoenix. It will spend that much again in 2009 for next year’s halftime show when the Super Bowl takes place in Tampa. The company would like to fill your head with images of carefree cruising along some coastline, not a trouble in sight, riding on your four new Bridgestone Tires. It’s very important to Bridgestone Firestone that you retain this image and feeling inside of you whenever you hear the name Bridgestone Firestone.

Without this advertising-inspired image, you might start to consider and care about another one. Such as a seven-year-old Liberian girl, sick from toxins, with blistered skin, her eyes unprotected from the latex she is harvesting as she laboring on the Firestone Rubber Plantation. Or perhaps, you’d worry about striking workers and their families being beaten, detained and arrested solely because they want their union elections to be recognized and to, at last, be treated with dignity.

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