Interesting news -- sad really, but not unexpected -- from Advertising Age about the decline in sales of big American brands around the global marketplace. In a study conducted by GfK Roper, US blue chip brands such as Kodak, Coke and Colgate are taking a beating overseas, and Roper's Jennifer James says, "Our foreign policy has contributed."

This was the thing that wasn't ever supposed to happen. America was going to stay strong in the marketplace even as we embarrassed ourselves in the marketplace of ideas. WMDs? Nobody was going to care, as long as there were American movies and Coke commercials, then our foreign policy could continue to strike oddly dissonant notes, right?

Wrong, apparently. While I'm not prepared to buy completely into the idea that George Bush and the Iraq War are torpedoing worldwide sales of Coke, I do think that the well-documented declining attitude around the world toward America -- largely based on our adventures in Iraq, but also other behaviors such as torture, and well, torture is probably plenty -- was bound to bleed over into other things. I can't find a link right now to a New Yorker piece I read several years ago about the youth of Iran still secretly indulging in decadent western flourishes -- literally sporting Gucci under their burkas -- because they found our culture enticing even as they were compelled to join weekly "death to America" rallies. We were holding onto these folks by the skin of our teeth, with our consumerism the final, tenuous link. Make enough mistakes, enough enemies, and enough victims, and that will break.