Posted On: Monday - April 16th 2018 12:24PM MST
In Topics: Political Correctness Economics ctrl-left Big-Biz Stupidity
The concept of boycotts and the newer thing, "buycotts" are not forms of stupidity themselves, in fact, far from it. It's the stupidity that initiates these informal consumer actions and the stupidity that goes with it all that require mention here on Peak Stupidity. The impetus for this post was a talk with a man, to be mentioned more later on, about the Delta Airlines executive's mouthing off about the NRA a month or more back.
Lately, I've read about Laura Ingraham and her troubles with Fox News due to her accurate but offensive statement about the gun-control high-school soy-boy twit, David Hogg. (BTW, any network that would go ahead and use "Accurate but Offensive" as their logo - no charge, guys - may be one to get me back watching the TV once in a while!) Anyway, Mrs. Imgraham's tweet to the twit caused her detractors to encourage viewers to boycott her Fox News show, and then spontaneously caused various sponsors to cave in as advertisers due to the usual cowardice and stupidity of their executives. That can, in turn, cause a boycott by Ingraham's and sanity's fans of those companies in question. I will write more on how the Peak Stupidity blog could be doing this stuff all day, but just for this time here are these companies, in case our reader(s) want(s) to make a U-ey, if he were for some reason reading this post in an Office Depot parking lot:
Rachael Ray’s Nutrish pet food brand (true story—I gave that to my dog once, and he puked), Expedia, TripAdvisor, Wayfair, Johnson & Johnson, Nestlé, Hulu, Office Depot, Atlantis, Paradise Resort, Honda, Liberty Mutual, Progressive, and Jenny Craig.That is a partial list, BTW, and comes from Memo to Laura Ingraham: Never Beg by a Mr. David Cole on Takimag.com. I've written about this website before, most recently here regarding the great anti-PC writer Jim Goad. This particular article by Mr. Cole is about more than just the Ingraham brouhaha, and includes his own experience with the cntrl-left's tendencies to try to ruin careers due to their being offended. "Don't apologize if you were right." is his point.
Now, back to our point, the buying and not buying or viewing and not viewing can go both ways, and back-and-forth a bit. Sometimes things can backfire nicely against the cntrl-left crowd when it takes offense. The Chick-fil-a deal of a few years back is the best example of this in my memory. Here it was the executive who didn't so much mouth off like the Delta Exec, but only expressed his own opinion about gays and gayness in some interview or some manner that made it public. He had made absolutely no store policy regarding homo-sexuality, as customers are customers and chicken don't even have time for homosexuality these days in the nasty factory farms, even if they have the inclination. Well, once his offended detractors decided to boycott, the non-necessarily anti-homo, but more reasonable, supporters started a buycott so huge that it would make you think a shrewd ad-guy working for Chick-Fil-A had thought the whole thing up himself*. No, I don't think so by any stretch, as Mr. Dan Cathy, the president (and heir of the founder) sounds like a very principled guy. Even if I have a big hankering from the spicy chicken sandwich on a Sunday, I have an abiding respect for a man who keeps the business closed each and very Sunday. This is even at airports where the rent must be outrageous, not to mention the 1/7 cut in the general top-line! There, you other PC cowardly CEOs, is a man of principle.
Back to the level of the peons who may decide not to watch Fox News until Mrs. Ingraham is off the air, or back on the air, or to buy lots of stuff from Office Depot before you
This week should be a good one for blogging, and our apologies for tailing off early last week.
* as is Peak Stupidity's opinion about the mid-1980's "New Coke" thing.
Comments: