Archive for June 10th, 2009
How to write to corporate America – by Sebastian Gray, for Gray Matters
Dear HillBuzz,
Like the rest of you here, I’m disgusted by the “jokes” David Letterman has made this week about the New York Yankees raping Willow Palin and impregnating her on the recent trip her mother gave her to see a ballgame in the new Yankee Stadium.
In New York state, sex with a 14 year-old is statutory rape: by “joking” that certain Yankees players “knocked Willow Palin up”, Letterman is, by definition of young Willow’s age, “joking” about her being raped.
And that’s in addition to Letterman “joking” about Willow being used by former Governor Eliot Spitzer as one of his prostitutes.
The only way to put a stop to these sort of “jokes” by Letterman is to channel Al Sharpton and mimic his best tactics and techniques. If you notice, whenever Sharpton believes the black community is being attacked in any way (whether he is right, or whether he is just race-baiting), he INSTANTLY calls for an economic boycott of everyone involved — and exerts immense pressure on corporate America to force whatever he wants.
I’ll be helping to write letters to David Letterman’s top three advertisers, once we know for sure who those are, by ad volume and gross revenue each year. We should know that shortly, so I can give your readers specific examples of what I write when I need to hit corporate America where it hurts most.
A few years ago, my ex, David, was injured at work, knocked unconscious, and taken to the most expensive hospital in Chicago, Northwestern Memorial, by an ambulance his company called for him. It was a CLEAR worker’s comp claim, as he was knocked unconscious on a work machine, at his work station. While he was incapacitated, his company made the decision to seek medical treatment for him — David was uninsured, could not afford healthcare, and the company’s decisions resulted in him receiving over $15,000 worth of treatment. He was held for three days in the hospital, after receiving numerous CAT-scans, MRIs, you name it, all to determine whether or not he had a concussion.
Now, David had barely $700 in the bank. There’s no way he could have paid a $15,000 hospital bill. The insurance company representing his company denied his claim, and tried to fight the worker’s compensation case. It’s a personal story, so I’ll omit the details, but I can say that I spent many, many hours in law libraries and going to every federal and state agency I could think of here in Chicago to gather the information I needed to wage a three month letter writing war with the insurance company. They denied the claim again and again, but each time I got a letter back from them with another denial, I sent a new letter back refuting their latest excuse, with copies of all my previous letters in the increasingly large envelopes as well.
Not only that, but each letter received at least two more people CC-ed on the full packet. So, letters that first started going only to the claim administrator assigned to David now went to that person’s supervisor, and the supervisor above that person, and so on, all the way to the CEO. After that, I filled out the whole C-suite, copying the CFO, COO, CIO, etc. Then came the board of directors and all the major media outlets both in Chicago and also in the cities where the insurance company had offices. Finally, in the last few weeks of letter writing, I also started copying low-level company employees on the letters to the point where I was sending out packets to basically everyone I could think of who worked for the insurance giant — so embarrassing them that after 3 months not only did they pay David’s claim in full, but we also got an extra $1,000 “Settlement” to cover what we spent on postage and mailings to get these people’s attention.
If you want to get through to corporate America, this is the mindset your readers need to have: they will resist you, and try to ignore you, and most definitely laugh at you in their boardrooms…but if you are persistent and you keep writing them, and writing them, and writing them, then you will ultimately scare the living daylights out of them.
Because most Americans are lazy.
Some will complain or fight a denial received in the mail, but 90% won’t. MAYBE they’ll write one letter. But, few will write two. And absolutely NO ONE writes what amounts to a letter a day, mailed to everyone of any importance at a corporation, with the correspondence building and building and building.
To be honest, I didn’t even send out packets to EVERYONE on the CC list. When the list got to over 50 names, I was probably sending packets to maybe 5 of the 50 cc-ed with each letter. I’d always send one to the claims administrator, the CEO, and the execs overseeing the particular Illinois branch office that denied the claim. But, then I’d just keep them guessing as to WHICH of the 50 people all around the country received a CC of that particular packet.
Sometimes, towards the end, I’d send out two mailings a day.
Until I won, and David’s bills were paid.
You do not mess with my man and get away with it.
Not. On. My. Watch.
And you don’t get away with joking about rape, either. I have several friends who endured this — and I’ll tell all of you now, though it’s hard for me to talk about, that I was date-raped once just a few years ago myself by someone much bigger than me who just wouldn’t take no for an answer (and then passed out drunk afterwards and pretended the next morning that he had no idea what he did). So, rape’s not funny.
EVER.
But ESPECIALLY when it’s statutory rape being joked about involving a 14 year-old and a professional baseball player.
We all make decisions where we spend our money, especially in these brutal economic times. That applies to corporations as well. If I ever walked into a restaurant, no matter how much I love the place, and heard the proprietor joking about raping a 14 year-old, I would let my feet express my opinion on that business and the person in charge of it. NEVER AGAIN would that vile pig receive a cent from me — even if it had previously been my favorite place in the world. Even if everyone I do business with eats there and boycotting that place would cost me business. I would rather be homeless and eating out of the garbage than doing business in a place that’s run by HUMAN GARBAGE.
So, my advice to you and your readers is:
(1) to find the three biggest advertisers Letterman has
(2) focus on advertisers having anything to do with children
(3) identify the entire C-suite of both the advertiser and that particular agency making the commercials
(4) write to every single person on the list you make above at least once a day, and do your level best to fill up their voice mails with POLITE and PROFESSIONAL (no expletives) chastisement on a personal level for giving any pennies to keep that vile pig Letterman on the air
(5) use the Internet to post on every site imaginable the fact that M&M Mars, for instance, sells candy that promotes rape. Talk about how buying peanut M&Ms helps encourage the statutory rape of 14 year-olds in New York. Make a list of all the products made by M&M Mars and send that to every church group, daycare center, high school, etc. that you can find (with copies to the entire C-suite and exec board in (3) above) telling parents that purchasing any of these products puts money into the pocket of a pervert who promotes the rape of young girls like their daughters
(6) Once your boycotts are organized on the local levels, have teams in all cities contact their local news and tell them about what you are doing…invite the news to come out and watch you picket in front of grocery stores (once you obtain the public gathering permits, if needed, of course) to encourage fellow shoppers to boycott all M&M Mars products until they yank their ads from Letterman…in smaller cities, this would be a big news item, as there is often nothing to report in Mineral City, Ohio on days that cats have not gotten stuck in trees
M&M Mars will buckle and pull its support — in about a month, I would guess. Just like Kellogg’s yanked its sponsorship of Michael Phelps once he made headlines not for strokes in the pool, but tokes on his marijuana bong. M&M Mars cannot afford to sell the candies parents could quickly associate with rape.
And there is absolutely no defense of Letterman possible in this instance. Ultimately, Letterman will come out and claim that he MEANT to make fun of Bristol Palin, not Willow, and that some low-level writer made a mistake and ASSUMED it was Bristol, not Willow, on the New York trip. Most likely, that’s what CBS will hide behind…that the made fun of the wrong daughter, and were most likely intending to make fun of the oldest Palin daughter being forcibly impregnated, not the Palin’s middle daughter, young Willow.
But, CBS is in a bigger mess than they realize right now.
It was indeed 14 year-old Willow, not 18 year-old Bristol, that David Letterman stood in front of the camera and talked about a New York Yankee, grown man, baseball player impregnating — in what is statutory rape in every state of the union, from what i understand.
There’s no way out of this.
Don Imus was fired for much, much less. David Letterman should be fired, too.
Will that happen? I don’t believe so…as Letterman is more of an institution than Imus ever was.
But, CBS is in real trouble right now. Katie Couric just clocked the lowest ratings for a news broadcast on American television in HISTORY. Ad revenues are down everywhere, and once a month when Dr. Utopia gets on the TV and commandeers primetime for one of his ego trip national addresses, the networks lose tens of millions of dollars.
CBS cannot afford to lose M&M Mars or any two other large advertisers. If you direct all of your firepower at three big players like this, all selling products to families, and you heed my advice above, SOMETHING will happen before a month is out. You just have to put a little Al Sharpton in your life, be persistent, and write, write, write.
I’m enlisting everyone I know here in Chicago to help with this, on both sides of the aisle. Robby’s asking his mom and her Coffee Club friends down in Mineral City to do the same (and those ladies love nothing more than to write letters to strangers all day mad about something). I’d also suggest finding senior citizens who are retired and cranky in general to help write letters too, as it would give them something important and fun to do.
Anyone who thinks it’s wrong to EVER joke about rape, consider yourself drafted.
Anyone who is sickened by the thought of a 62 year old pervert getting off chuckling over statutory rape, consider this your chance to get off your butt and do something about it.
Corporations that advertise on CBS’ nightly pigfest, The Late Show With David Letterman, consider yourself on notice, and pray you have enough interns in the mail room, becuase if I have anything to say about it, THERE IS A MIGHTY HEAP OF MAIL COMING YOUR WAY.
Sebastian Gray
Chicago, Illinois
List of David Letterman's Advertisers
On June 8th, 2009 David Letterman “joked” about 33-year old Alex Rodriguez of the New York Yankees statutory-raping 14 year-old Willow Palin during the game at the new Yankees Stadium. Willow Palin was the only Palin daughter at the game with her mother, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. Letterman “joked” that Palin’s “daughter got knocked up by Alex Rodriguez” during the game. Sex between a 33 year-old and a 14 year-old is statutory rape. Letterman then followed this vulgarity up on June 9th, 2009 by comparing 14 year-old Willow Palin to one of disgraced former Governor Eliot Spitzer’s prostitutes, while calling Governor Palin herself “a slutty flight attendant”.
Every day, add the advertisers you see on David Letterman or his website to this thread so a constantly updated running list is maintained.
Tell the following four companies you will no longer be patronizing them so long as they continue to advertise on Letterman:
Mars Candy (click for address and C-suite names)
Kellogg’s (click for address and full list of C-suite execs)
We’ll have better results if we focus all our might on the four advertisers (like Olive Garden, Mars Candy, Kelloggs, and Johnson + Johnson), but here are other advertisers of David Letterman as well. As one poster put it, “Aside from the cars and electronics, most of Letterman’s ads are for baldness, sexual dysfunction, pain relief, and vitamins. What does that tell you about the man?”
Microsoft (Bing)
Boston Market
Best Buy
Icy Hot
Wyeth (Centrum Vitamins) click here for C-suite exec addresses
Chase Bank
Macy’s
Kia
t-Mobile
Cadillac
Johnson + Johnson (Aveeno & KY Brand)
Merck (Rogaine)
Cricket
Samsung
Sanofi-Aventis (Ambien)
Mazda
Jet-Dry
Saturn
eBay
Intel
Lexus
TV.Com
On the Border Restaurants
CBSsports.com
JohnFreida.com
DiTech
Earn My Degree
True Credit by Trans Union
Bowflex
Rahal Racing (partner with David Letterman in racing ventures that earn him lots of money):
http://automobiles.honda.com/ – Honda supplies Letterman’s cars with engines
If is far, far more important for you to contact CBS’s advertisers. Only pressure on CBS’ revenue stream will get the executives there to take action against David Letterman. Think about it: CBS knows EXACTLY who and what David Letterman is. They have never had a problem with him or the vulgar, misogynistic things he says and does before. Only if advertisers abandon the network will CBS rethink its commitment to airing the Late Show with David Letterman. Write to the biggest, family-friendly advertisers above first and foremost, but here’s CBS’ contact information as well, in case you are looking for that too:
CBS Contact Info: (212) 975-4321
CBS Executives:
Nina Tassler = nina.tassler@cbs.com
Kelly Kahl = kelly.kahl@cbs.com
Kim Sartori = kim.sartori@cbs.com
Les Moonves = lmoonves@cbs.com
Reason: remember when Michael Phelps was caught with his marijuana bong? Kellogg’s cereal dropped him like a hot potato because its brand image is child-focused for most of its products. Speedo won’t ever drop Phelps, no matter what he does, but we doubt he’ll ever have his face on a McDonald’s happy meal again either.
No candy company will want to be associate with raping 14 year-olds.
Kelloggs won’t want to be involved in another messy advertising relationship after Phelps.
A concerted effort against family-friendly advertisers of Letterman will work, but it will require persistence.
“M&Ms: the candy for people who think rape is super funn!”
“Kelloggs: the breakfast cereal for misogynists and perverts who exploit minor children!”
“Johnson + Johnson: household products for when a 62-year old pig’s own johnson needs statutory rape to get going!”
Now, this should have brand managers racing for the phone if a focus and spirited effort is directed at hammering them each and every day until their ads stop appearing on Letterman’s show and website.
In this economy, a loss of three or four big advertisers like that will indeed be noticed by CBS.
UPDATE #2: Some advertisers, such as Best Western, are claiming they do not advertise on Late Night with David Letterman. This is apocryphal: Best Western buys banner ad space on CBS.com, and these ads appear on CBS.com when you click on the David Letterman page on that site. Best Western, Aerosoles, Paramount’s new Star Trek movie, and other banner ads pop up on every page of David Letterman’s site. This is paid advertising Best Western and these other companies CHOOSE to buy from CBS.
If you are an advertiser upset people who despise rape and refuse to allow Letterman to get away with promoting the rape of minors in New York, then you need to get on the phone to your ad buy account execs and yank your web ads from CBS.com.
No one believes you do not have the power to do this. If Best Western has agents who can post here, then you have agents who can call your advertising firms and stop giving your money to CBS and David Letterman.
It was consistently reported that WILLOW Palin, 14 years old, was in New York, attending events with her mother. Not 18 year old Bristol.
There is NO EXCUSE for Letterman and his writers to “make the mistake” of attacking “the wrong” Palin daughter.
None.
Just as there is no excuse for Best Western or any other advertiser to justify their support for Letterman by claiming, “we only buy ads online, not on TV”.
Best Western: the hotel to stay in if you love jokes about raping minors!
UPDATE #3: Some advice on how to write a good letter to corporate America.
UPDATE #4: Sarah Palin on The Today Show, 6/12/09. As Palin states, there was only one Palin daughter at that Yankees game: 14 year-old Willow Palin. Letterman deliberately said the Palin daughter at the Yankees game was impregnated by Alex Rodriguez during the game. That’s statutory rape of a 14 year-old by a 33 year-old baseball player. Palin calls Letterman out for, days later, trying to spin it that he was talking about “some other daughter” being forcibly impregnated at that baseball game — a daughter who was thousands and thousands of miles away, while 14 year-old Willow was the Palin at the Yankees game, in proximity to Alex Rodriguez. The joke makes no sense if it was indeed about Bristol, and the fact that Letterman never used “the Palin daughter’s name” seems like he deliberately built wiggle room for himself with his Obots and MSM enablers if he got called out for his joke about statutory rape.
Anyone advertising on Letterman’s program shares accountability for the content of his show because without your ad dollars corporate America, Letterman wouldn’t be on the air.
UPDATE #5: Why Democrats like Al Sharpton effectively use boycotts to affect public policy and corporate responsibility — and why conservatives allow the MSM to attack their own with impunity: it all boils down to the simple fact that Democrats never give up, never let up the pressure, while Republicans have poor follow through and don’t effectively organize. More on this from Sebastian Gray, with inisight into how David Letterman could inspire Republicans to see all this as a very teachable moment.
UPDATE #6: As of June 18th, Olive Garden, Embassy Suites, and Hellmann’s Mayo have all pulled their advertising off The Late Show with David Letterman, costing CBS millions of dollars in ad revenue through the end of this year. We’d like to see the pressure continue on Mars Candy, Kelloggs, and Johnson + Johnson until Letterman loses these three big advertisers as well, so keep making those calls, writing those letters, and faxing these three big sponsors until they join Olive Garden in sending Letterman and pigs like him the message that statutory rape is not funny and sexism and misogyny will no longer be tolerated in a world where Letterman could have never gotten away with making racial statements in the same vein. Continued pressure on Mars Candy, Kelloggs, and Johnson + Johnson will make Madison Avenue advertising execs see that attacks on women inspire a whole army of Al Sharptons to stand up for women in the same way the black community rallies when it believes racism is afoot.
A brief word on corporate brand management
In regards to CBS and David Letterman’s encouragement of the rape of 14-year-old girls, remember that ALL consumer products in this country have brand-managers they pay millions of dollars to, to keep their corporate images as pure, wholesome, and downy-soft as the ad copy focus-group tested to exhaustion for each bar of soap or pomegranate-infused shampoo.
Here in Chicago, our friend Robby worked in an ad firm for a few years, doing market research on brands, and spent countless hours monitoring the Internets (that series of pipes and tubes), for ANY negative chatter about a brand.
If the Hillary Democrats, Indepedents, and Palin supporters out there band together and target Letterman’s advertisers directly — and if we fill Google searches with repeated and constant linkage of “Letterman + rape of 14 year old + Dove soap”, for instance, the people who make Dove soap will, after soiling themselves and making copious use of Dove soap on their heinies in the washroom, rethink sponsorship of Letterman that now equates their soap with rape.
“Dove: silky soft. As advertised on David Letterman’s late night rape-of-minors-promoting pigfest”.
It is not through elected officials or CBS that we will hit back at Letterman hardest — it is by directly attacking the brands of all sponsors who advertise on The Late Show with David Letterman.
Trust us, the brand management of these products costs billions of dollars. Once a brand is tarnished, it’s worthless to a corporation. There is no way to ever salvage a shampoo, soap, or ketchup once it Googles as “that stuff David Letterman sells after joking about rape”.
Hit this pig where it will hurt him most, people: HIT THE BRANDS THAT SUPPORT HIM.
And then watch him fall from his perch and into a long overdue retirement.
Today we are ALL Palins
Listen up, because we’re only going to say this once (before we repeat ourselves again and again like we always do): TODAY WE ARE ALL PALINS.
Have a daughter? Well, how would you feel if a haggard, sick, unfunny pig told millions of people how funny it would be if she was raped and forcibly impregnated? What would you do if he also went on to compare your daughter to one of former Governor Spitzer’s prostitutes?
Have a wife or mother? Well, how would you feel if that same diapered pig, all in the span of just a few moments, called her a slut, denigrated her intelligence, and implied she was a lesbian — all with the full-backing of “The Tiffany Network”, CBS?
Well, the silver’s certainly tarnished in terms of what CBS once was, and what it used to stand for. We gave up on the Late Show years ago when we graduated high school and realized childishness and stupid human tricks weren’t funny, if the central human delivering this “yuck-fest” is a truly stupid human indeed.
Some of you out there have daughters. Some of you are someone else’s daughters. We all have mothers and grandmothers and most of us have aunts and female cousins. We hope you all have female friends. And then there’s guys like us, who won’t sit quietly while David Letterman attacks the Palins in such filthy, disgusting, sexist and misogynistic terms.
The Palins released their own statements today, with special emphasis noted in the message from Todd, a poppa grizzly who sums it up so well:
“Any ‘jokes’ about raping my 14-year-old are despicable. Alaskans know it and I believe the rest of the world knows it too,” Todd Palin, First Gentleman of Alaska, 6/10/09.
“Concerning Letterman’s comments about my young daughter (and I doubt he’d ever dare make any such comments about anyone else’s daughter): ‘Laughter incited by sexually-perverted comments made by a 62-year-old male celebrity aimed at a 14-year-old girl is not only disgusting, but it reminds us some Hollywood/New York entertainers have a long way to go in understanding what the rest of America understands – that acceptance of inappropriate sexual comments about an underage girl, who could be anyone’s daughter, contribute to the atrociously high rate of sexual exploitation by minors by older men who use and abuse others,” Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, 6/10/09
Get on that phone right now and give Sarah Palin’s office a call and you tell the Guv that, wherever you are in this nation, that you and the people around you SUPPORT THE PALINS. You tell whoever answers that WE ARE ALL PALINS NOW — and that we will not sit still and let David Letterman and CBS get away with joking about raping minors and contributing to the exploitation of women by sick fiends like this late night yawnfest host.
Here’s Palin’s office in Anchorage, where she spends most of her time:
Sarah Palin — Anchorage Office
(907) 269-7450
Don’t talk politics as it’s a government number and her staff can’t engage in political talk, but they sure can listen to words of support for the Governor and her family — and they certainly need to hear that the Governor and the job she is doing in our largest state is appreciated throughout the nation, and not just within Alaska’s borders. WE ARE ALL PALINS NOW.
Next up, you get on that phone and on email and you reach out to everyone you know who is a wife, mother, daughter, sister, aunt, niece, grandmother, cousin, or friend and you ask those women (and the men who stand with them) when is ENOUGH GOING TO BE ENOUGH when it comes to this sick, twisted, misogynistic garbage?
When are the people who support women going to mobilize as effectively as the black community does in instances like the Don Imus nappy-headed controversy? It took Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson a day or two to have Don Imus yanked off the air, and his TV show canceled.
What’s going to happen to David Letterman after he promoted the rape of a 14 year old on national television? What’s going to be done to him after he compared a young minor to one of former Governor Eliot Spitzer’s prostitutes? What’s going to be done to him after he degraded women?
If these jokes were racial, he’d be off the air today.
Because they are against women, and are about rape, the pattern is for Letterman to skate along without consequence.
Is that going to happen again, or are we going to finally band together and DO SOMETHING about this garbage this time?
A massive, organized effort needs to be waged to take down Letterman’s advertisers…anyone who advertises on his show, from this day forward, needs to be informed they are supporting the rape of young girls and their products need to be crossed off your shopping lists. This garbage can no longer stand — and is only condoned by CBS because Letterman is a cash cow for the network. Take away those ad revenues, and early retirement could be in Letterman’s future.
But, there’s no Al Sharpton on the side of women to hue and cry over this…we need to do that ourselves…and we need to band together, Democrat and Republican, to do it.
For Willow.
For Sarah.
For Hillary.
For Chelsea.
For our moms, grandmas, sisters, aunts, nieces, cousins, friends.
ENOUGH IS ENOUGH.
We’re not going to take it anymore.
The Top Ten Reasons David Letterman Needs to Be Retired
(10) He is a demented, 62-year old pervert who thinks it’s funny to joke about a 14 year old being raped and forcibly impregnated.
(9) His show stopped being funny at least 15 years ago.
(8) He’s a pig who wears diapers.
(7) Living in a glass house where he refused to marry his girlfriend of many years despite fathering a son, Harry, with her, making the little boy a bastard for nearly 7 years, means this particular hypocrite shouldn’t throw stones at ANY family, for ANY reason, lest stones be deservedly thrown back at him.
(6) Where are the jokes about Sasha and Malia being raped by baseball players? Where are the jokes about dirty watermelon pickers and greasy chicken fryers instead of “slutty flight attendants”? If vulgar, sick racial jokes are never allowed, why are vulgar, sick misogynist ones? If the First Daughters of the United States are clearly off limits, why isn’t a First Daughter of the State of Alaska? Answer us that, Leftists.
(5) Would Letterman think it was funny if Conan O’Brien or some other Late Night jester joked about Letterman’s son Harry being raped at Little League? Where does Letterman draw the line, exactly, on whose children it’s funny to joke about being raped.
(4) What would CBS do if a rival network DARED air something as vulgar as (5) or (6) above?
(3) Calling him a pig who wears diapers is an insult to pigs, diapers, and pigs who wear diapers.
(2) How phallic is it that Letterman obsesses not just over rape, but of rape specifically by a large man with a giant bat? That pervert has serious Freudian, Oedipal, anger, bad hair, gruesome teeth, you name it issues.
(1) David Letterman has a teeny weiner.
Wednesday Open Thread
What’s on your mind today?
What are you doing to tell CBS, David Letterman, and their advertisers that making jokes about 14 year old girls being raped by baseball players and “slutty flight attendants” is not acceptable?
