In Reply: Lowes, Kayak: You shoulda just ignored the bigots, guys... (All-American Muslim)

In reply to: Another Advertiser Pulls Out Of “All-American Muslim” - Alan Colmes' Liberaland

It looks to me like Kayak (along with the rest of the businesses who pulled their advertising) got played for fools by this bigoted group in FL. They would've been wise to just ignore them and make their decisions based on, well, business--and perhaps, assuming Mr Birge is telling the truth (I have my doubts), even gone so far as to delay a planned ad pullout, so as not to even appear to be caving to bigotry.

Now they're damned by one side or the other, no matter what they do or don't do next. Whether they resume advertising or not (or write simpering excuse-laden explanations or not) either the bigots or a big swath of the rest of America is going to watch and remember what they did and do, and be unhappy with whatever decisions they make.

It was a classic rightwing media/FoxNews ploy... Speculate about and otherwise talk up any/all possible controversy about a given issue, and then dutifully report that the issue has become "controversial," with the not-so-subtle suggestion that mainstream Americans (and politicians, and companies) might want to avoid getting too involved with this "hot-button, third rail, controversial" issue.

Sadly for these companies who pulled their ads, the ratings for the show will likely go up, temporarily at least, because of the "controversy," meaning more eyeballs on the ads of companies that stuck it out, while the ones who pulled their ads get labelled as bigots and as lacking backbone, whether fairly or unfairly. This little nothing show that not a whole lot of people were watching in the first place is now a "controversial" wedge issue for a whole lotta folks.

Shoulda just ignored the bigots, guys... Perhaps next time...
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Posted December 14th, 2011 at 15:50