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