Dell shows rare moment of social conscience, pulls back from brink of sanity

I told myself that I wouldn’t be one of those bloggers who replies to news stories on the Internet, but then I came across this article and I couldn’t resist:
Dell red-faced over salesman’s Lenovo jibes

The Register’s normally wry, acidic treatment of corporate foibles is usually spot on, but I have to take issue with this one. The author fell asleep at the wheel in choosing to mock Dell for putting its giant corporate foot in its mouth.

The issue at hand is that a Dell salesman, in hot pursuit of Lenovo customers, told some folk that they might want to avoid Lenovo given that it’s owned in part by the Chinese government. In case you missed it, Lenovo bought off IBMs lackluster PC division. If IBM’s clunky hardware wasn’t enough to turn you off, this Dell salesman was betting that supporting the chinese government would.

As The Register rightly pointed out, Dell isn’t exactly the most ethical company with its own race-to-the-bottom outsourcing policies. But The Reg dropped the ball in that they let Dell weazel out of sticking to its guns. No, the real news here is Dell is apologizing for what seemed to me to be a reasonable statement. Who wants to support a company that makes money for a regime that has its own section at Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International?

Now, I’m not sure where all Dell has outsourced labor to, but I’ll bet some of General Tso’s finger-lickin’ chicken that they’ve got some interests in China. Where does that leave us? We’re up in arms over a little hypocrisy; some Dell sales rep is getting slow roasted on a spit; and a little snowflake of reason falls into the bonfire of globalization.