Archive for June, 2009
Why persistence matters when facing down Corporate America – by Sebastian Gray, for Gray Matters
Dear HillBuzz,
In a previous letter to you I talked about the ordeal I went through getting my ex-partner David’s hospital bills paid by his company’s insurance company after he was injured on the job a few years ago. I offered this personal anecdote as an example of how to fight back at Corporate America when it’s in the wrong, but think it’s important to tell you and your readers more of the story to illustrate how important persistence is in dealing with large corporations that require time and relentless commitment before your message finally sinks in.
This is all, of course, pursuant to the ongoing boycott of David Letterman’s sponsors in relation to the jokes he made on June 8th and June 9th about the hypothetical statutory rape of 14 year-old Willow Palin by 33 year-old Alex Rodriguez during the seventh inning stretch of the Yankees game the minor child Palin daughter attended with her mother, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. Today, we learned that The Olive Garden, Hellmann’s Mayo, and Embassay Suites are the first three advertisers to pull their support for David Letterman and his brutalization of young women in such sexist, misogynistic, and vulgar terms. Letterman offered up a weak “apology” riddled with excuses and justifications for his odious behavior (which in my book doesn’t amount to an apology at all — the way David’s mother, Louella, my ex-mother-in-law, used to apologize for the various terrible things she routinely did to me by saying, “Well, I’m sorry if you found that offensive, BUT…”). The moonbats, Obots, and trolls then came out in full force chanting, “it’s over! He said he’s sorry! Move on!” just when the tide’s turning and both Corporate America and Letterman’s handlers realize they’ve got a big problem on their hands.
The same thing happened to me in the three month letter-writing war I waged against what I’ll call the Mutual Benefit Insurance Company and David’s employer at the time, a retail giant I’ll call Boxco: just when we started to make some traction and get concessions out of Mutual Benefit and Boxco, Louella started telling David we should just give up, because we were never going to win, and were spending so much money on postage. ”Besides,” Louella concern-trolled to David, “Mutual Benefit offered to pay 25% of the bills, and that’s better than nothing.” I reminded Louella that paying 100% of the bills was better than settling for 25%, and Louella scoffed, “Well, if YOU can get THEM to pay 100% of David’s bills then I’m a monkey’s uncle.”
More like a cankerous and stinky baboon’s butt, in my opinion, but you see what I had to deal with for three years while living with David and being part of a relationship that including not just he and I, but also a very opinionated, perpetually wrong septugenarian long distance back in Richmond Heights, Ohio.
David’s hospital bills were $15,000, after having a seizure while at work operating some computer equipment, then cracking his head open on a work station as he fell to the floor and was knocked unconcious. His supervisor made the decision to call 911 before David regained consciousness, and he was in the emergency room at Northwestern Memorial Hospital (the most expensive in downtown Chicago, while other more affordable options were available) before he ever came to. From there, he was whisked through a dozen different MRIs and CAT-scans, racking up a bill in the thousands. The doctors decided, after a few hours, that those initial scans were all inconclusive, so they scheduled him for another round of scanning over the next two days, requiring him to rack up the majority of his hospital bill in what amounts to one of the world’s most expensive hotels.
David’s work called me, as I was his emergency contact person, and mercifully Northwestern gave me no trouble for being David’s male partner: I was allowed to see him, consult with his doctors, and make decisions about his care the same way I would have if we were a heterosexual couple instead of two gay men. David’s mother meddled in all of this from afar, the same way she would have, undoubtedly, if we were a heterosexual couple as well (and instead of being the unctious cartoon Louella, she was Pearl Slaghoople, or some equally cartoonish derivation thereof). Louella was 80% of the reason David stayed in the hospital as long as he did, while both he and I decided he was fine to go home (and that the hospital was just trying to rack up a bigger bill). David listened to Louella, however, and thus began the $15,000 battle.
And let me tell you, the hospital wasted no time in billing David. His injury happened on a Monday, and he was in the hospital until 330pm on Wednesday (we later found out that if he had been released at 259pm he would have only been billed for half a day on Wednesday, instead of the whole day that he was charged…which I’m SURE was just a coincidence). By Friday, we had the first of the many bills that arrived, with each doctor and specialist billing David separately.
Being a project manager, I just handled the process the way I would a landscape or construction project I worked on: treating each doctor as a subcontractor and bundling all their invoices into a binder as I began prep to fight this case. Also in project management mode, I spent hours at the library researching governing statutes and used a friend’s LexisNexis login to bone up on governing statutes and relevent precedents covering worker’s compensation and employees being seriously injured on the job, through no fault of their own, while operating work machinary in the course of their normal job duties.
I found at least three cases where various workers had seizures while operating work machines and somehow injured themselves, resulting in trips to the hospital after employer’s called ambulances. Just like David’s case. In all these instances, including one that happened at a bakery and another in an office where the machine in question was a computer, the employee’s medical bills were 100% covered by worker’s comp — just as David’s should have been.
Because, not being able to afford insurance at the time (and not being covered by my insurance in Illinois because this state does not require employers to treat two male partners like two heterosexual spouses), if given a choice, David would have either gone to the cheapest hospital he could find or would have gone to an Urgi-care center or Minute Clinic to get another opinion before committing to spending thousands of dollars on tests that ended up all being “inconclusive” (which, to me, still suggests the hospital believed all along those tests were doing nothing more than helping to pay for the new 128-bit GE CT-scanner that cost Northwestern a bundle).
The insurance company started denying David’s claim as soon as the bills started coming, and the very day a denial of payment would come in I’d use everything I researched to hit back, refuting everything the insurance company said. I quoted directly from both case law and federal/state statutes to show Mutual Benefit and Boxco why, precisely, they were wrong in denying this claim — further pointing out that under federal law both companies could make themselves open to civil suit on our part for willfully, capriciously, and arbitrarily denying a valid worker’s compensation claim and, thus, adding more needless stress to an injured worker.
Essentially, that law’s in there to prevent behemoths like Mutual Benefit from denying, denying, denying claims until an injured worker is bankrupt, homeless, or dead and the insurance company never has to pay out on its claim. If a claim is deemed valid by the worker’s compensation board — which David’s was, in all three hearings that were held — and a company just keeps denying it without substantive reason, the penalties were something like thousands of dollars for each act of capricious denial.
And there I was, keeping track of all those instances, writing a letter a day right up the bureaucratic chains at Mutual Benefit and Boxco. First, I wrote to just David’s claim supervisor, Maryann…and after I realized the game she was playing, I figured out who her supervisor was, and who that person’s regional manager was. Every letter I wrote I copied to two people above the person i was writing to — so that not only would the recipient realize I meant business, but she or he would wonder what those in the regional office were saying about what was going on in that department.
I just kept writing and writing and writing, with another letter of denial coming every day.
And every time I wrote, I included copies of all the letters I wrote beforehand as well.
Our living room became an assembly line for these letters. I had stacks and stacks of paper, all piled neatly, always ready to go. When I’d finish a new letter, I’d print out 30 copies, then work the assembly line to include copies of all the paperwork before it, with CC: to the entire C-suite at both Mutual Benefit and Boxco.
Then, I moved onto the Boards of Directors of both companies…and then I started CC-ing the local media in all the cities where these companies had offices. Of course, I was also copying the state and federal worker’s comp and labor department officials on all of this too.
Towards the end of the three months it took to get all of David’s medical bills paid, I had two pages of CC-ed people on each letter. I think the last batch of letters we sent out had 50 people copied on it.
Now, not everyone got every letter even if they were copied on it — that’s a little trick I pulled on Mutual Benefit. I would ALWAYS copy certain important people, like David’s claims supervisor and the CEOs of the companies, but then I’d pick 5 out of all the people I CC-ed to send actual packets to. Since I was mailing packets every day, I’d typically hit everyone on the list with at least one packet, so if they were in communication with one another, someone was always receiving SOMETHING. I just made it look like they were all getting every packet.
Just to make these people realize that the letter writing was never going to stop unless they did what they were supposed to do and paid David’s medical bills in full.
I also kept track of what I spent on the printing and postage of all the correspondence to convince them to do what they were supposed to do anyway, because as I understood the law if these people willfully, capriciously, and arbitrarily denied David’s claims and forced us to spend so much out of our own pocket to get them to do what they were supposed to do anyway, they should reimburse us.
Despite Louella every day saying I needed to just give up and accept the 25%, then 50%, then 75% that Mutual Benefit offered to pay of the medical bills, I held out for 100% payment (and ultimately received that, with a $1,000 settlement to cover our costs incurred in the investigation and resolution of this claim).
Louella wanted us to give up at 25% and kept telling David it was hopeless.
I knew we weren’t done yet, and that we had to be persistent.
Louella wanted us to give up at 50% and kept telling David I just needed to shut up.
I knew we weren’t done yet, and that it takes weeks before Corporate America takes anyone seriously.
Louella wanted us to give up at 75% and kept telling David that “Mutual Benefit is sorry, just tell him to move on to something else, that obsessive little French f***” (which is what she often called me).
I knew if we just kept up the assembly line that Mutual Benefit and Boxco would soon do whatever it took to stop the letters from coming.
And I was right.
So, I tell you this to remind everyone that David Letterman’s advertisers will indeed desert him, but the pressure must be kept on them to do so. It’s been about 9 days since Letterman made his vulgar “joke” about the statutory rape of Willow Palin by Alex Rodriguez. In just 9 days three major sponsors have abandoned Letterman.
Just imagine what his sponsorship deals will look like after 18 days…27 days…a full 30 days.
Maybe you can convince Mars Candy, Kelloggs, and Johnson + Johnson to drop him like Olive Garden, Hellmann’s, and Embassy Suites did.
I bet at least one of those will dump Letterman before 30 days is out.
But, the real victory will never fully be known because no matter how many sponsors actually drop Letterman publicly, the ad execs will surely use 30 days’s worth of boycott letters to negotiate much-reduced ad rates from CBS in the future. So you could be hurting Letterman in ways you will never understand, just by standing up against this leftist political activist and showing Madison Avenue and the CBS execs that he can’t get away with this misogyny anymore.
So, I remind you that nothing good has ever come from listening to trolls and Louellas. They either don’t know what they are talking about, or they want you to fail, for whatever reason. They also smell bad, have horrific teeth, and are twice-divorced publicly shamed adulteresses who live in glass houses and throw a lot of stones (at least in the case of my Slaghoople former mother-in-law, anyway).
Keep the pressure up, and see for yourself that determination and perseverence pay off big time in the end.
Sebastian Gray,
Chicago Illinois
Israel News Round Up – by Laura Rosen Cohen
Dear HillBuzz,
Well, I’m not really the kind of person who ever gets speechless, but this article about former US President Jimmy Carter makes me almost speechless. He has to hold back the tears in Gaza! What do you think about that? Has Jimmy Carter ever met a terrorist that he didn’t love? Has he ever met a Jew he liked? Here’
s what he was saying earlier in the day today.
In my opinion, much of the turmoil (and dare we say-revolution) is a result of Jimmy Carter’s inept handling of the Iranian revolution and his caving into the forces of darkness during his tenure as President. And now, the current administration seems ready to continue the unfortunate Carter legacy of appeasement. Here is a piece by Brett Stephens at the Wall Street Journal. What do you think? I am inclined to agree that Obama seems more concerned about pressuring Israel than giving any sign of hope to the protesters in Iran. Here’s a view from Dennis Prager-which makes me really unhappy, even though it is probably true: Dear Iran-Don’
t Count on America. Can you imagine? Did you ever think you would hear yourself say such words?
The current administration remains committed to diplomacy with Iran. How do you feel about that? It makes me really angry-and I weep for the incredibly brave Iranian protestors who have died because they want their freedom, too. These are dangerous times. Your President is being tested by many dark forces. Will he rise to the occasion, or sink into woeful leftist appeasement policies that could take years to undo-if ever?
I hate to leave off you with depressing news, so just for fun, listen to this amazing song-it’s an Israeli singer (Shlomy Saranga) who sings in Greek-and he’s mixed in tracks from another very famous Israeli singer (Zohar Argov) who unfortunately died of a drug overdose. I like it a lot. One of my kids calls it the “mana mana” song…(remember the Muppets “Manamana”
song?). If you would like other Israeli music recommendations, please leave a note in the comments.
Laura Rosen Cohen
Toronto, Canada
One down, three to go: Olive Garden pulls its support for David Letterman
Sebastian Gray has more to say about this in his column for Gray Matters, but today Olive Garden announced it does not support David Letterman or his jokes about the statutory rape of a 14 year-old.
This leaves Mars Candy, Kelloggs, and Johnson + Johnson as three of Letterman’s family-focused advertisers who continue to support the home of sexism and misogyn on television, the David Letterman show.
Please stop calling, writing, or faxing Olive Garden and instead focus all of your attention on Mars Candy, Kelloggs, and Johnson + Johnson.
All over the Internet, the Obots have been going nuts today, posting and posting over and over again “he apologized…it’s over…give it up…just give up!”.
Why would you give something up if it’s working before Mars Candy, Kelloggs, and Johnson + Johnson drop their support for Letterman and CBS?
If you really want to make sure both Letterman and CBS learn their lesson, you will continue your efforts until he loses Mars Candy, Kelloggs, and Johnson + Johnson as advertisers.
We plan to encourage you to do this for a total of 30 days, at the end of which at least one more of Letterman’s big family-focused advertisers will drop him, costing CBS millions in revenue.
Al Sharpton wouldn’t stop until Letterman is fired. We never believed having him fired was possible, but getting three more of his big advertisers to drop him is certainly doable, and roughly works out to getting one of those big companies to abandon him each week.
We think it’s a project worth investing time and effort in — because it’s about much more than just Sarah Palin. This is the sort of thing we wish had taken root during the primaries and general election, but it took this long to organize a coalition to have any impact to stand up for women against the media.
30 days of this, unrelenting, will teach CBS, Letterman, and Madison Avenue a lesson none of them will soon forget: you joke about statutory rape or make other sexist and misogynistic remarks and you suffer the consequences from here on out. Delivering a weak apology filled with excuses is not good enough for Al Sharpton when race is concerned, and should not be good enough for women when sexism and misogyny are concerned either.
David Letterman Protest Rally — 430pm 6/16/09 Ed Sullivan Theater on Broadway in NYC
Consider this an open thread for the David Letterman Protest Rally taking place today from 430-630pm outside the Ed Sullivan Theater on Broadway in New York.
If you are going, bring your cameras and take as many pics as your camera can hold, including video of the protest. IMMEDIATELY get to a computer as fast as you can and load the video up to YouTube and the pics up to Flickr or Facebook. The MSM won’t cover this protest, so it’s up to you to do the job journalists stopped doing when the MSM became Dr. Utopia’s State TV and Ministry of Propaganda.
We have absolutely no idea what’s going to happen at the Protest Rally today.
There could be hundreds of people, or there could be thousands, or just dozens. We have no idea how many will show up. There was not a lot of time to organize this, so we’ll see if the Tea Party spirit prompts people to turn out and make their voices heard in large numbers today.
Right now, we’re thinking about the ramifications of a lot of things, including:
(1) Will Republicans follow through on this, or will they fall into old habits, get distracted, and move onto other things before Letterman is really raked over the coals, Imus-style? Concern trolls have been everywhere the last day or so, insisting “I agree Letterman is disgusting and was wrong, but I think it is time to move on as we really need to talk about healthcare now”. That’s what a concern troll does: it’s a person working from a script with an agenda to de-motivate you on the Internets (that series of pipes and tubes, of which you are viewing now).
Concern trolls are expertly deployed by the Left to dampen Republican (and moderate Dem, as the case may be) spirit. Concern trolls breed Eeyores, those people who say things like “It’s hopeless! We might as well stop because they are never going to fire Letterman! We are wasting our time and it is better to just do nothing and complain about things quietly to myself!”
One of the most glaring instances of the difference between Republicans and Democrats happened back in August of last year on the first pub crawl Democrats for McCain did with the Chicago Young Republicans here. We actually did this in Boystown, the way we always did pub crawls to recruit volunteers for Team Hillary efforts, and we were so surprised we got about 25 CYRs (all straight) to come out to Boystown with us and join forces to recruit volunteers for McCain (netting about 50 solid volunteers, in the most unlikely of places according to the MSM). Well, the bars were packed that night and at almost every one of them the CYRs would take a look at the line and say, “Oh, that’s too long. I can’t wait in that line. Let’s do something else.” And we would remind them, “The line moves fast. This bar is the biggest in town, with a lot of people in the 30-50 age group we want, who would be most likely to give McCain a shot if we talk about tax issues, spending, and McCain’s stance about earmarks”. But, the CYRs never wanted to wait for anything, and would instead want to go to a small bar down a sidestreet that was empty (which equals lowered potential for recruits) than wait in a 10 minute line to get into a bar where we had the potential to talk to over 1,000 people all in one place.
Consistently, this is something we, as moderate Dems, notice Repubicans do. As a group, they don’t understand the value of patience or persistence. They give up if there is a long line, or get distracted down a side street instead of focusing on the main event. Will that happen today, where people start listening to the MSM “to just stay home, this is over, he said he was sorry, move on” or will they stand their ground and turn out to decry sexism and misogyny and stand up for Palin? We’ll see at 430pm EST.
(2) If the numbers are large, in New York City, of all places, Republicans need to realize just how special Sarah Palin is. There is no other Republican who can motivate people to fight like she can. Could you imagine people organizing a boycott and protest in response to an attack on Bobby Jindal, Charlie Crist, John Huntsman, or Mitt Romney? That’s not going to happen. Ever. There are a lot of Republicans we know here in Chicago who say things like, “Palin will get attacked. Tina Fey will come out of retirement and end her campaign. Palin will become a joke.” We remind them of what the Left did to Ronald Reagan prior to the 1980 campaign. They called him stupid. They made jokes about him and the monkey he co-starred with in that Bonzo movie. They said he was just a lightweight, not very good actor. And now he’s a Republican icon.
Well, we believe you’ve got a new icon in Palin, but most Republicans don’t realize it yet. Not only does she have charisma and appeal to regular Americans, but she motivates people like us, moderate Democrats, to stand up on her behalf (something she does much, much better than Reagan ever did). She also comes packaged with WONDERFUL natural marketing potential as a candidate: a red/white/blue moose decal everywhere and other Alaskan-themed images, at once reminiscent of Teddy Roosevelt and also the American pioneer spirit…but also the kind of personality and vitality that would allow her to use a rockin’ song like “We’re Not Gonna Take It” as her campaign theme…because after 4 years of socialism, that is exactly what Americans are going to want to hear, and Palin’s exactly who more than half of them are going to want to hear it from.
A big showing for Palin today would be a surprise for many people…and could, four years from now, be seen as the germination of her presidential bid…in the same way that the MSM likes to use Dr. Utopia’s address to the DNC in 2004 as the launch of his own campaign so far in advance.
There is something truly special about Sarah Palin the MSM and Left does not understand. We don’t claim to understand all of it either. We have no idea what’s going to happen today, but know Letterman and his ilk on the Left are already galvanizing Sarah Palin into an icon she would never have become without their constant barrage of attacks.
We hope enough people turn out today to rattle CBS, David Letterman, the DNC, the Liberal Left, The Olive Garden, Mars Candy, Kelloggs, Johnson + Johnson, and the rest of Leterman’s sponsors so that they not only think twice about attacking the Palins in such ugly terms again, but also hesitate to attack women in general in these vulgar, sexist, and misogynistic terms anymore.
In a few hours, we’ll know what sort of turnout there is, and can then begin to piece together what it all means, but there certainly is a lot to think about…and a ready-made theme song to set it all to:
The angrier gays get over DOMA and DADT, the more likely you are to hear stories about Man's Country
We honestly can’t talk about the stupidity of the LGBTQ community anymore.
The link above does that for us. You remember last year we tried for three weeks to get then-Candidate Utopia to march in his first-ever Gay Pride Parade here in Chicago (since he was the only Illinois politician of note to have NEVER, not once in his life, marched in a Pride Parade). Instead of marching for LGBTQ rights, Candidate Utopia got his haircut on the south side and played basketball at the East Bank Club downtown, before taking a very long steam and sauna with a bunch of very rich, very old, very naked white men.
That tells you more than you will ever need to know about what Dr. Utopia thinks of the LGBTQ community (and also conjures an inescapable and grotesque vision of sweaty raisins).
Senator Roland Burris is marching in the Chicago Pride Parade this year — so it’s not that a black politician doesn’t want to support LGBTQ rights. It’s that Dr. Utopia has, deliberately, at every turn always chosen to distance himself from the LGBTQ community as much as possible.
You can speculate as to the reason why, as many here in Chicago often do when their anger over Dr. Utopia’s lies about DOMA and DADT bubble to the surface.
And speaking of bubbles, more often than not these conversations, especially with older Chicagoans, often turn to a place called Man’s Country on Clark up in Andersonville — and what people remember about some skinny young guy who used to go there a lot in the 90s, telling people he’d meet in the dark that he was a state representative.
It’s funny how here in Chicago, the more people realize they were duped (through their own stupid fault) by the lies Dr. Utopia told the LGBTQ community, the more often you hear Man’s Country stories in almost the same breathe.
Kind of like how “Hope!” and “Change!” always seem to go together.
Or “lies” and anything at all related to “the LGBTQ community” when it comes to this White House.
We hope Republicans see the Alinksy-Al Sharpton methods work
In case you are living under a rock somewhere, we hope Republicans out there all see the Alinsky-Al Sharpton style methods work: over the weekend, two of David Letterman’s sponsors apparently dropped him: Embassy Suites and Hellmann’s Mayo (still waiting on confirmation on that one, but it’s been appearing in emails to people from Hellmann’s corporate all morning).
These are not some of the four biggest advertisers of Letterman’s like Olive Garden, Mars Candy, Kelloggs, and Johnson + Johnson, but it’s a great start.
CBS obviously felt the heat and instructed Letterman to make another statement regarding his jokes about statutory rape. Once again, instead of just saying he was wrong, admitting his staff wrote a joke about a 14 year-old being statutory raped by 33 year-old Alex Rodriguez, and then tried to claim he was actually “joking” about “some other Palin daughter” thousands of miles and several time zones away, Letterman hemmed and hawed and tried to excuse his behavior.
Well, there is no excuse for his behavior.
Just as, to the Left, there was no excuse for Don Imus’ behavior.
Imus apologized after calling the Rutger’s female basketball team “a bunch of nappy-headed hos”. Al Sharpton heard that comment and, Adam West style, immediately slid down the race-baiter pole to his top-secret race-baiting cave deep beneathe Harlem, where his rally signs, protest banners, and legion of wailers and screamers are always revved up and ready to go. No sooner had the words left Imus’ mouth, it seemed, did Sharpton begin his march in front of the cameras, rolling around on the floor with a hue and cry for Imus to be fired.
For RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACISM!
Sharpton may be a lot of things (a crook, a liar, a snake, a cheat, a shameless race-baiter), but he man is a GENIUS when it comes to holding the MSM accountable for what he personally feels is RAAAAAAAACIST.
You can agree with Sharpton or not. You can think his tactics are childish and ridiculous — and we would agree with you. But, there’s no one who can deny Sharpton’s effectiveness. If forcing corporate America to its knees were an Olympic sport, Sharpton would be Michael Phelps, though hopefully not squeezed into anything manufactured by Speedo.
Ironically enough, Republicans most often remind us of the Gore Recount campaign back in 2000 whenever they are up against the MSM. Have you seen the HBO movie “Recount”? It’s worth a watch just for the depiction of Warren Christopher and Donna Brazile as the two most bumbling and asinine advisors a presidential candidate ever had. At some point in the movie, someone notes that Gore’s team “brought a knife to a gun fight”, because Christopher and Brazile kept saying how undignified this or that was, or how they were going to take the high road here or there, and how they had all these other bigger battles they needed to fight.
Yap. Yap. And more yap.
Meanwhile, at Bush HQ, Rove, Baker, and the Republicans actually operated effectively. As James Carville notes on his speaking engagements with Rove, “Bill Clinton would have won in 1992 with or without Carville, but Bush would never have won in 2000 without Rove”. A truer statement was never made, and largely this all boils down to the way the two camps approached that 2000 recount.
The other night, a group of friends was talking to us about another movie, Showgirls, with Elizabeth Berkley and many others whose careers have never recovered. The movie is terrible, but 99% of the people in it act their parts like they’re in a Royal Shakespeare production — all except Gina Gershon, who knows just how awful a movie she’s in, and revels in it. Everyone else pretends they’re in a much better movie than they’re actually in, but Gershon alone gets it.
Republicans got it back in 2000. They brought Uzzis to the knife fight.
Republicans got it back in 2004. Say what you want about Rove, but he masterfully rolled that election.
And then, after having won the White House for two terms in a row, Republicans wandered off into a fog and forgot where they were and what world they are living in. Rove is your Gina Gershon, but instead of following his example, you’ve all been pretending you are things you are not, living in an alternate reality whenever you try to pretend the MSM’s bias isn’t important and that you needn’t counter it each and every day to keep the moonbats in check.
There is absolutely nothing more important than hitting back HARD every time the opponent takes even the slightest swing at you.
Boy, does Al Sharpton ever know that. He declared all-out-war on CBS and its advertisers over the nappy-headed hos remark. Sharpton could not possibly care less about the Rutgers basketball team. We doubt he’s thought much about it since. But, it was an opportunity for him to flex his muscles and remind the MSM that any jab at the black community would be addressed with a loud, angry, take-no-prisoners mob.
Republicans, and women, need to realize that as repugnant as Al Sharpton is, the man is certainly effective. And did we mention repugnant. Because he is. On both counts.
And the great irony is that if Republicans and women both co-opted Sharpton’s playbook, and kept asking themselves “what would Al Sharpton do?” whenever they are confronted by something like David Letterman’s putrid statutory rape jokes, Al Sharpton and his fellow race-baiters like Spike Lee, Jesse Jackson, James Clyburne, Eric Holder, and John Lewis would all be sizably diminished.
As things stand now, Sharpton and company are the only ones who stand up to the MSM with sustained and dedicated effort to pressure sponsors and executives alike to hold on-air “talent” (a term used as loosely as possible) accountable to standards of behavior Sharpton and company themselves set.
You want fair and balanced media? Then put a little Sharpton in your life. Shake that rump. Rev up those pipes. Bellow and bluster and scream out at the obvious bias in the media, directing all your volume at the sponsors. If you take down the sponsors, you take down the networks. It is that simple, and it is what Sharpton has been doing now for over 20 years.
The same is true for women: you want an end to sexism and misogyny? You want political activists like David Letterman to be as afraid of making statutory rape jokes as they are about telling jokes about a watermelon patch or fried chicken? You want the MSM to be as afraid of being called sexists and misogynists as they are positively terrified of being labeled RAAAAAAAACIST?
Then you need to follow Al Sharpton’s example and HOLD THE SPONSORS ACCOUNTABLE. In turn, they will hold the networks accountable, which is something Al Sharpton has always known and has proven on more than 100 occasions to be true.
As much as you will hate to admit it, “What would Al Sharpton do?” is a question we ALL need to ask ourselves when dealing with the MSM media and the agenda it’s pushing for the radical socialist Left.
Tuesday Open Thread: David Letterman Boycott Day Seven
Click HERE for a list of David Letterman’s advertisers and sponsors.
Remember, today is the protest against David Letterman’s particular brand of sexism and misogyny in New York City. For everyone who watched the MSM, Dr. Utopia’s campaign and surrogates, and every pig political activist like Letterman rip apart Hillary Clinton, Geraldine Ferraro, Sarah Palin and other women in last year’s presidential election, this is your chance to fight back and in a loud, clear voice put corporate America and the MSM on notice that women (and the men who support them) — just like the black community under Al Sharpton when it perceives racism afoot — can band together whenever sexism and misogyny appear.
And speaking of Al Sharpton, you need to keep asking yourself, “what would Al Sharpton do?”. Concern trolls are loose everywhere saying, “don’t go to a protest, this is over now, Letterman kind of apologized, I have other things to do”. Did Al Sharpton give up after Don Imus apologized (and apologized sincerely, too, we might add, unlike Letterman)? No, Al Sharpton kept the pressure up until Imus was fired.
David Letterman should be fired as well. The pressure must be kept up.
Why?
Because the boycott is working. Very publicly, Embassy Suites announced it’s dropping Letterman’s sponsorship because of the negative reaction Letterman’s vulgar jokes about statutory rape received from a vocal public.
The Olive Garden, Mars Candy, Kelloggs, and Johnson + Johnson are three of David Letterman’s biggest sponsors: what’s their stance on jokes about statutory rape? How do they feel about a political activist going on TV and making such crude “jokes” about one of Sarah Palin’s daughters, and then repeatedly justifying himself by saying he “didn’t know he was doing anything wrong?”. That’s not an apology. An apology takes ownership of what was done, and does not excuse it — because, frankly, with the amount of news coverage Sarah Palin’s trip to New York had there is no excuse for Letterman not to know it was 14 year-old Willow at that baseball game. The “joke” Letterman told about 33 year-old Alex Rodriguez “knocking up Sarah Palin’s daughter during the seventh inning” makes no sense if it’s not about the Palin the daughter who was in close proximity to Rodriguez at that game. We all know A-rod’s a big stud, but even he can’t impregnate someone who’s thousands of miles away, like Bristol Palin, the 18 year-old daughter of Palin (and it would still be disgusting and below the belt if Letterman actually DID mean to tell his joke about Bristol).
Our biggest criticism is that Republicans give up at everything so easily. It is so rare to see conservatives put up any sort of fight in the culture wars. Every day, we keep hearing Republicans say this or that doesn’t matter, or that they don’t pay any attention to Hollywood. But, the truth is AMERICA pays attention to Hollywood. America treats comedians as newscasters. The jokes they tell become engrained in the cultural fabric that impacts people’s thoughts: once a “joke” gets into pop culture, it becomes “true” to most people. Take for instance Tina Fey’s “I can see Russia from my house”. Every day, someone uses this line to slam Sarah Palin’s intelligence, not knowing she never even said this.
The reason things like this stick is because Republicans are so myopic they never push back against any of this stuff, because “it doesn’t matter”. So, the Left lobs these “jokes” at Republicans, Republicans never fight back, and the Left then creates the meme upon which the next election will be played and conservatives are always forced to play catch-up, without ever making any ground or winning.
David Letterman long ago stopped being a comedian and is indeed a political activist. His job, and the job of his peers in the MSM, is to take down Sarah Palin so that she is not a viable candidate for president in 2012 against Dr. Utopia. When Palin is successfully eliminated, these clowns will go to work on the next most promising Republican, creating “I can see Russia from my house” jokes to eviscerate them too (and, considering the fact the MSM is pushing people like Bobby Jindal, Charlie Crist, Mitt Romney, and John Huntsman to be the Republican nominee in 2012, it won’t be hard for them to top what Tina Fey did to Palin in 2008, that’s for damn sure).
If you don’t take a stand here and now, this will just keep happening over and over and over again.
Double your efforts and get Olive Garden, Mars Candy, Kelloggs, and Johnson + Johnson to join Embassy Suites and dump David Letterman.
Send a message to the MSM that there’s a new strategy in the culture wars employed by Republicans: and it’s called getting off their lazy butts and actually DOING SOMETHING for a change.
Spend the money for a good cause and FedEx letters to all the companies you can, straight to their C-suite: yes, it is expensive. Will those letters get to the Board? Yes. Will they read those letters? Yes — because you went to the expense to actually FedEx them a document that can be tracked, which you have a record of them receiving.
If not FedEx, then register-mail well-written letters asking what Olive Garden’s corporate stance is on jokes about the statutory rape of a 14 year-old.
If not register-mail, then slap a 44-cent stamp on a well-crafted, no more than three paragraph, one page letter letting Mars Candy know it’s going to be Hershey from now on in your household because you can’t support a company that helps keep David Letterman on the air.
If not a piece of mail, then send a FAX to Kelloggs letting them know that a company which dropped Michael Phelps like a hot potato after one bong hit sure seems to think statutory rape is funny with its continued public support of David Letterman.
If not that FAX then call Johnson + Johnson and tell them that Procter & Gamble will become your family’s choice for household goods since J+J has decided to keep the lights on at the Ed Sullivan theater by standing by David Letterman as he wallows in sexism and misogyny, then makes weak excuses for his behavior that are so very easily refuted (as we do not believe for an instant he and his staff of dozens of people had no idea it was 14 year-old Willow Palin he was “joking” about Alex Rodriguez statutory raping at the Yankees game).
If not a FAX then burn up the phone lines hitting Letterman’s major sponsors hard today.
If you are going to the protest, make sure your signs call out Letterman’s ADVERTISERS so corporate brand managers look at the protest and see signs like this everywhere:
Give those brand managers nightmares, and more sponsors of Letterman’s nightly pigfest will yank their ad dollars, teaching CBS a valuable lesson as it’s in the process of negotiating to keep Letterman on the air another 2 years (which is already 20 years past his prime).
Fill the protest in front of the Ed Sullivan Theater today with as many jabs at Letterman’s corporate sponsors as possible, and then watch others john Embassy Suites in yanking their support for this misogynist who thinks he’s so clever in his weak excuses for jokes about statutory rape.
If not now, then when do you intend to stand up for women?
If not now, then when are conservatives and moderates going to get off their lazy butts and push back against the David Lettermans, Tina Feys, Jon Stewarts, Jay Lenos, and other political activists on the Left — who every day promote the Liberal Agenda, creating the meme under which elections operate, without so much as a peep from Republicans?
When are Republicans going to wake up and see that unless you take a stand against the Left and its MSM cheerleaders, you will continue to lose the culture wars that ultimately decide elections?
We hope that day is today.
At 430pm in front of the Ed Sullivan Theater on Broadway in New York City — where we hope there will be a large crowd out supporting decency and pushback against misogyny.
Because this is about much more than Sarah Palin. This is about what these creeps did to Hillary Clinton last year, what they did to Geraldine Ferraro in 2008 and 1984. What these creeps do to just about any woman who dares to run for office.
And it will never change unless we all band together across party lines and do our part to inflict as much damage on David Letterman’s brand as possible so that the next Tina Fey or Letterman who decides to morph from comedian to political activist will take pause before awakening this unlikely coalition again.
No more sexism.
No more misogyny.
No more David Letterman.
Enough is enough, already.
So tell Letterman’s sponsors that today!
