What's the sound of a person falling off a cliff?

It could well be "Nooooooooyi!

I've gone back and forth on this during the afternoon. But after reading her speech in more detail, I think she's getting a raw deal, and that the reaction to her remarks is taking them out of context. The example she gives is of the crass behavior of some American businessmen in China, and she does point out that America is a great country:

This incident should make it abundantly clear. These men were not giving China a hand. They were giving China the finger. This finger was red, white and blue and had “the United States” stamped all over it.

Graduates, it pains me greatly that this view of America persists. Although I’m a daughter of India, I’m an American businesswoman. My family and I are citizens of this great country.

This land we call home is a most-loving, and ever-giving nation – a “promised land” that we love dearly in return. And it represents a true force that – if used for good -- can steady the hand – along with global economies and cultures. Yet, to see us frequently stub our fingers on the international business and political

But what was played up was this:

Unfortunately, I think this is how the rest of the world looks at the U.S. right now. Not as a part of the hand --giving strength and purpose to the rest of the fingers--but, instead, scratching our nose and sending a far different signal.

I can see how these lines could seen as expressing sentiments like those of MoveOn.org and George Soros, I think that Hugh and Powerline aren't being quite fair. The whole metaphor of the middle finger of the world was a really stupid and because that gesture is very offensive and the rest of the stuff about the hand as a whole lacks the same impact as the main image.

She's talking about how Ugly Americans can damage our image with the rest of the world. The military knows this from how often American soldiers misbehave overseas, which is why it took such pains to discipline the soldiers who abused prisoners at Abu Ghraib. I can imagine Donald Rumsfeld making the same point, but he's been in government long enough that he would know better than to phrase it in this way. I don't think she deserves the grief she's getting, because the story she recounted is true and some Americans do hurt our image.

I don't believe in boycotts. They hurt a lot of good people along with the bad. The exception to that would be cases like Ghandi's protests against British colonialism or Martin Luther King's use of a boycott to show the people the economic stupidity of treating blacks as sub-humans.

In this case, however, there is no Pepsico policy that America is an evil influence in the world. The problem is that Ms. Nooyi's words sound too much like the kind of things the left is always saying about America. She is not Michael Moore, and it would be unfair to take out our resentment for him on her.