Okay, the name alone tips you off to the fact that it's cheap sweatshop crap even before you open the catalog or enter the website. But Oriental Trading Company is a perennial resource for inexpensive crafts and trinkets for parents and teachers, especially for parties and holidays. It's a treasure trove of luau supplies, jewelry kits, tree ornament supplies, and birthday party goody-bag stuffers, and it costs pennies. I've always seen it as a necessary evil.
Turns out, Oriental Trading Company may be just plain evil. I don't give a flying crap about the "Soldier of God" merchandise this op-ed is ranting about, all that cheap patriotism with theocratic overtones just flies right over my head as I merrily go on being the proudest American liberal pinko I can be. So they're discontinuing this product line but still selling it to anyone who asks, big whoop. People will put the damndest things on the back of their cars, won't they?
But Oriental Trading Company's ownership by the Carlyle Group is pretty gross. An investment firm with a heavy emphasis on defense contractors, Carlyle's employees and investors stand to gain quite a bit from the ongoing wars (ironic, given the "Soldier of God" product line). President Bush once sat on the board of a Carlyle company, and his father is one of several former heads of state or high-ranking officials who has worked with the Carlyle Group in a major capacity. Hmm, you know? I hate goody bags anyway, and we have enough tree ornaments.
