http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FwxeemzzYc

Nike's got soul. Not a soul, just soul.

Nike, which pushes three digit shoes to the inner cities, has taken Marvin Gaye's classic rendition of the national anthem and turned it into an advertisement.

Just do it.

What's Going On?

I remember Marvin Gaye's classic album about real life in real cities. When he sang that "Inner City Blues Make Me Wanna Holler" it was because they did. Those blues still should make us all want to holler, because life is little better there now than in 1971.

Which brings us to Nike and 2008.

I'm no liberal, and I don't think corporate and profit are dirty words. But there's something wrong with Nike wrapping itself in the flag when its product has as much to do with America as fish do with trees.

Look in Marvin Gaye's Detroit. Do you see Nike making shoes there?

Watch the video. LeBron James is from Akron. How many people in Akron make shoes for Nike? Kobe is from just outside of Philly. See any Nike jobs flowing into the inner city in Philadelphia? Maybe in HotLanta where Dwight Howard is from? No. What about Brooklyn? Ask Carmelo Anthony for directions to the Nike plant in his old neighborhood.

Scratch that. Don't ask any of the players who wear Nike about Nike. They take the money and look away. We wear the shoes and look away, then complain how the gasoline companies are making obscene profits.

The deal is this. Nike puts shoes on the best basketball players in the world, and America's inner cities love those players. Nike takes that love and turns it to gold. But nobody who wears Nike on the toughest streets and basketball courts in this country has a snow ball's chance in the summer Olympics of ever drawing a paycheck from Nike.

Don't tell me it's because the cost advantages of subcontracting are essential to stay in business. The production cost of Nike shoes is anywhere from ten to thirty times less than what they sell for. If you moved production to Detroit, or Chicago, or LA you would cut into the $2.7 billion in cash and short term investments on their balance sheet, but you'd hardly put the company out of business.

Maybe we try something different next Olympics. Run the same video of the next "dream team" wearing Nike. Just put out ads with more appropriate national anthems in the background. Something for the good folks who made the shoes.

Start with a few lines from the Vietnamese national anthem-

"The path to glory passes over the bodies of our foes...overcoming all hardships together we build our resistance base."

Or China's' "Everyone must roar his defiance. Arise! Arise! Arise!"

Or Indonesia's "Indonesia, a beaming country. A country we love with all our heart."

In the end it comes down to image and truth. The national anthem is a powerful song because it is true.

There really was a Star Spangled Banner. It was a 30 X 42 foot garrison flag that flew over Fort McHenry in Baltimore in 1814. Francis Scott Key watched from a ship on the river as the British pounded the fort.

The rockets red glare Key wrote about was from actual banks of small incendiary rockets which were launched at the roofs of buildings inside forts to try to start fires. The bombs bursting in air were heavy shells exploding and raining shrapnel down on the forts defenders. Defenders who would die at their post rather than pull down their flag. You can see that flag in Washington at the Smithsonian.

Like American manufacturing it is pretty badly beaten up, but worth saving.

Marvin Gaye was perhaps the greatest singer of the 20th century. His style, his talent, his poetry all created an image. But what he wrote about was real and true.

"Money, we make it.
Before we see it, you'll take it."

It's time for Nike to get real.

Just do it.