Johns Manville employees Googled up a sexy video on their office computers on Tuesday.
"You put those two words in a search mode and we're all in trouble," said Mike Lawrence, general manager for the building products company's insulation business. "We're all going to be terminated soon."
Johns Manville is owned by Warren Buffett, who works very hard not to be sexy.
Buffett, however, remains sexy for three reasons 1) his immense wealth as chairman of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (BRK-A) ; 2) the prevailing standards in Omaha, Neb., and, 3) his foray into the insulation business.
At a Home Depot in Virginia on Tuesday, President Barack Obama called out the hardware chain's CEO Frank Blake: "Frank, don't you think insulation is sexy stuff?"
Most people think of insulation as having the same sensual properties as sandpaper.
It was difficult for Johns Manville employees to believe that the leader of the free world had just said "sexy" and "insulation" in the same sentence. But when they went to their computers to watch the video, they found he had said it several times.
"Here's what's sexy about it: Saving money," Obama explained.
Obama is calling on Congress to provide temporary incentives for people to retrofit old houses with better insulation. It's not as cool as buying, say, granite countertops. But this simple act will significantly reduce carbon emissions, addressing folks in Copenhagen. It also will generate jobs, addressing folks here who might vote in the next election.
"It will allow us to hire some people .. if the numbers come through," Lawrence said. "But a lot more people will be hired by the small businesses that do the installation."
So these are the sexy, new green jobs Obama promised?
"I know the idea may not be very glamorous," Obama said, "although I get really excited about it."
Having survived another decade, this is what we've become: A nation of underemployed homebodies who need the President to lead us off our couches to blow some more insulation into our attics.
Maybe insulation would be sexier if someone did a calendar. Maybe there's some mystic allure to a working man in a respirator mask. Or maybe there are insulation installers who would be willing to straddle their blower tubes like I once saw Mick Jagger do with a fire hose at a hot, summer concert.
If you really want to see sexy in the insulation sector, how "bout that Pink Panther? Owens Corning (OC) supersedes Johns Manville as the largest the U.S. insulation producer, and it might be because it has been exploiting this little cartoon sex-cat for years.
Mike Kean, 42, president of United Fiber in Chandler, Ariz., never realized how sexy he was until Obama's pronouncement.
"I can tell you the results at home have been phenomenal," he said.
Kean's company makes cellulose insulation, mostly out of old copies of The Arizona Republic. What can be sexier than pumping your walls full of the ground-up and chemically treated work of professional newspaper reporters?
"It's called drill and fill," Kean said. "If you wet-spray cellulose, it goes in like a mud and it seals every nook and crannie. .. Oh, it's the best."
Kean's brother claims to be even sexier. Tod Kean, 40, president of Bonded Logic Inc., wrote a thank you letter to Obama that he signed, "Yours in Insulation Sexiness."
"Our product, UltraTouch Natural Cotton Fiber Insulation, is made primarily from the manufacture of America's favorite, and some would argue, sexiest clothing, blue jeans," he wrote. "It can be installed without protective clothing -- not that we condone being sexy without protection."
Earlier this year, Tod Kean helped set a Guinness world record for the most items of clothing ever collected for recycling. More than 33,000 pairs.
Bonded Logic gets most of its denim as scrap from factories, but thanks to celebrity-led donation drives, it has handled the pants of Halle Berry, Hugh Grant, Tobey Maguire, Johnny Knoxville, Penelope Cruz, Julianne Moore, and Kevin Costner.
"Sheryl Crow's have been in there," Tod Kean said.
(Al's Emporium, written by Dow Jones Newswires columnist Al Lewis, offers commentary and analysis on a wide range of business subjects through an unconventional perspective. Contact Al at al.lewis@dowjones.com or tellittoal.com)
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