In recent months, we have heard the Japanese call the US workers lazy, greedy
and illiterate. Those are fighting words to us, even if they may be true. The
question is what to do about it. My basketball coach always told me to exploit
the weakness of the opposition by using what (questionable) strengths I had. I
think the US should do exactly that with Japan. The Japanese are world leaders
in quality of goods and decades ahead of us in electronics like High Definition
Television (HDTV). We will never be able to compete with them in these areas, so
we must redefine the competition. 
I propose that the FCC mandate a new form of Television called Low Emission
and Definition Television (LEAD-TV). Such TV sets would have lots of static
interference, horrible resolution, be expensive, break very often, and would be
hard and frustrating to watch. Exactly the type of TV sets that American
industry and workers are already geared to produce! The Japanese, on the other
hand, could not produce such sets without spending billions in retooling; in
fact, they couldn't even produce the necessary low tech tools and would have to
buy them from the US or places like Bulgaria and Albania. Thus helping the world
balance of trade. 
But even if the Japanese retooled, in order to meet or deseed the FCC
standards they would have to import tens of thousand of American workers to show
their Japanese counterparts the "how to" of building shoddy products.
The Japanese might even have to hire the entire upper management of Ford, GM,
Yale, and Stanford, to show Japanese management how to really screw up
production. This would solve our unemployment problem. 
(This does not solve all our problems as we still are left with lawyers.
Especially since the supreme court overturned (five to four), the progressive
Ohio law requiring lawyers who have cute phone numbers (like 1-800-SUE-THEM or
1-JUST-SAY-SUE or 1-800-I-AM-RICH) to be skinned alive, rolled in salt, then
impaled in front of the statehouse. Something to do with something written
somewhere prohibiting "no cruel or unusual punishment." Actually not
the cruel part, as the court felt the punishment is fitting and totally
justified, but the unusual part. If we could only get Japan to copy our legal
system, our trade problems would cease.) 
But the biggest advantage of LEAD-TV would not be the jobs it created; it
would be the effect on our children. Schools would require that students watch
at least 4 hours of LEAD-TV every day. Since kids never do what they are told,
and LEAD-TV is so bad, I know my kids would even risk a spanking to sneak
upstairs, hide in a closet and read a good book. Yelling at them, of course,
would only heighten their resolve to read. In a decade, our kids could be the
most literate in the world! 
Now don't you think that our kids deserve the best of the worst we can give
them! Help me in supporting LEAD-TV for the US, write the FCC or you're
congressman now, or if your a typical American and can't right, just call
1-800-NUKE EM 2. 
PS: For those of you who think JUST-SAY-SUE isn't a valid area code, the ABA
sued the phone company in 1991 because there weren't enough cute phone numbers
and, of course, won. Now any lawyer can use anything for their area code.
Billions of dollars of phone equipment had to be junked and we the consumers had
to pay for that; but, hey, don't you agree that our lawyers are worth every
penny...