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Just What Are These ‘Ordinary People’ Trying to Hide?

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Think about it. The sun is barely peeking at the day as you trudge into the kitchen, tired, without makeup, in your bathrobe, and grab a cup of coffee.

Then your Japanese tenant, mild mannered, never any problem, slips into the chair next to you, quiet as a cat.

You pay no attention. Why should you? How could you have known ?

So you sip your coffee (with cream, no sugar) and go through the newspaper, casually tossing aside the classified ads and the sports section. Then you start in on your first real decision of the day. What’ll it be: bagel with cream cheese, or cereal with sliced banana?

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You glance over at your tenant, already dressed in his dark business suit. But you notice he’s acting a little funny, impatient, almost twitchy.

The fact is Takashi Morimoto has just about had it with your constant waffling. He’s thinking: It’s already midday in Tokyo! He wants to grab you by your coffee-stained lapels and shake you. “Decide already!” he wants to yell. “ Decide !”

But he doesn’t, of course. He’s cool as they come, the consummate professional.

You guessed it. Your shy tenant is really a mole for the Japanese auto industry! And you, by virtue of your sloppy flaunting of the American life style, have become the Benedict Arnold of beleaguered U.S. auto makers.

This is no joke, you understand. You’ve read about it first on the other, equally fact-filled pages of this very newspaper.

The French family of Costa Mesa--Stephen, Maritza and the two kids--described by their attorney as “individuals leading ordinary private lives” say that’s just about what happened to them.

So, naturally, they’re suing. How’s that for a lesson in Americana?

The Frenches say they’ve been conned, duped into revealing the intimate details of their ordinary private lives --Let’s see, how about “Roseanne” tonight? --for the sake of a market research project they never agreed to be part of.

Who knows, at this very minute a conference room full of Japanese auto execs could be passing around photographs of Stephen driving off to work in the Toyota, or Maritza parallel parking the Dodge Colt, and isn’t that Danielle, the 13-year-old, hanging out at the mall?

At this point, the Frenches aren’t talking--no telling what fascinating details a reporter could pull out of them--but their attorney, Nancy Kaufman, says they feel “violated.”

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“For all they know, he had a pipeline going straight to Tokyo!” she says.

Nissan, which employs Morimoto, says for the record that the Frenches’ lawsuit is “totally absurd” and adds that the family knew from the start that they stationed their man in Costa Mesa “to better understand U.S. life styles and attitudes about cars.”

Well, dear readers, you figure it out. All this fuss over a ho-hum family that’s supposed to be just like you and me?

I don’t buy it for a minute.

What, really , are the Frenches trying to hide? Why are they asking a Superior Court judge for permission to see Nissan’s file on them (not to mention unspecified monetary damages)?

Could it be that part of Morimoto’s mission was to research material for a Japanese sequel to the Oscar-winning “Ordinary People”? Sony is already big into the movie biz here, why not Nissan?

Maybe Stephen has thought it over and decided that he’s really no match for Donald Sutherland, or perhaps Maritza isn’t quite up for the comparison to Mary Tyler Moore?

Or how about this? The Frenches suing to prevent Nissan from concluding that everyone in America is as incredibly ordinary as they are.

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Lord knows, Nissan could already be shipping millions of beige four-door sedans, with no optional sunroof, to its dealerships throughout the nation.

Or maybe all of this is just a lot of hogwash. Let the judge decide.

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