Fred Thompson, pitchman: Support the troops by buying stuff from criminals

The BBQ Pit
1

I’d been hearing these radio commercials lately that Fred Thompson narrates, which struck me as really ‘off.’ They begin with a tale of battlefield heroism in Iraq, then follow it up by a plug for a company called LifeLock, which supposedly provides free identity theft protection to our troops. After saying that since our troops are protecting us, we need to have their backs, he urges us to patronize LifeLock.

I found it disturbing that a Presidential contender would have so little respect for our troops that he’d use their valor as just another tool to pitch a commercial product, but a little Googling showed that apparently the [L.A. Times found it disturbing for another set of reasons](http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-lifelock9jun09,1,7178167,full.story?coll=la-headlines-business&ctrack=1&cset=true" rel="nofollow):

It gets even better:

But the story goes on to show how that claim lacks credibility. The guy’s just a crook and a liar, is all.

But Fred Thompson’s willing to go to bat for him and his product.

Here’s what Thompson’s spokesman says by way of excuse:

Excuse me, but what sort of flimsy excuse is that? You always have choices, and this is a series of bad choices. Fred’s running for President this year, but only last year, he was signing a contract requiring him to lend his good name to anyone ABC radio told him to lend it to.

Between his lobbying and his acting, Fred Thompson’s a rich man, and a fairly famous one, too. It’s hard to imagine he had to sign that sort of contract just to get his voice heard on the radio. And I sure wouldn’t sign a contract that gave another party unlimited rights to associate my name with whatever crap they came up with, even though I’m far from as well situated as Fred: I care about my integrity, and don’t just sell it off to the highest bidder.

Finally, even having gotten himself into such a contract, Thompson was in a position where, contract or no contract, he could have said, “No, I’m not doing this ad - it’s sleazy and manipulative. And who the hell is LifeLock, anyway?”

So, Fred Thompson, this Pit’s for you.

2

Surely you should pit him for continuing after he found out, not for doing it in the first place?

3

Uh oh, here’s a shock, RTFirefly of all people running a GOP candidate’s name through the mud. Shocked I say, shocked.

And for the record, Thompson has nothing to be ashamed of (unlike you, who should be ashamed of quite a lot), he was in the entertainment business and in said business the concept of “mandatory endorsements” are quite common. It’s primarily a form of compensation, it allows entertainment companies to sign talent to large contracts but not have to foot the entirety of the bill themselves. Sure, Thompson could have said “well, I don’t want a mandatory/guaranteed endorsement clause in my contract” and I’m sure ABC would have obliged by deducting from his contract the amount of money he was going to make from said endorsements. Thompson didn’t sell his integrity or anything else, he sold his time, nothing more, nothing less. Do you really think all those star athletes and actors who do American Express commercials use American Express? Or that they really feel strongly one way or another about the product/service that Amex offers? Of course not.

4

Awww, poor Martin! It’s a rough time to be a Republican, isn’t it? Not only does your President stink, but your Veep stinks, and all of your party’s Presidential hopefuls stink.

I know I’m supposed to be kind to poor dumb SDMB Republicans by not Pitting Republicans when they do shitty stuff, but…naw. :smiley:

Exactly. He had that choice. He decided he was willing to take a bundle of money to let others capitalize on his name however they chose.

Yeah, that’s what all the prostitutes say.

If they don’t mind having their name associated with American Express, then that’s fine. And if Fred Thompson doesn’t mind having his name associated with some sleazebag who’d use our troops’ heroics to sell something he’d never heard of before, then that’s his call.

I personally think it says reams about the man. YMMV.

5

He doesn’t really know what he’s pitting him for, aside from being a GOP presidential candidate, that’s pretty much the only criteria needed to qualify for the prestigious honor of being pitted by RTFirefly.

The idea that this situation is even remotely relevant to Thompson’s politics is ludicrous. The idea that someone can’t separate their business life from their personal life is ludicrous.

If we’re going to start blasting every little thing politicians who are running for President do, then let’s get started.

I’ll confine myself to just one incident in Hillary Clinton’s long rap sheet of corrupt and improper actions. During her 2006 reelection campaign she employed a ex-convict as a fundraiser, and he was later indicted by the Justice Department for underreporting campaign contributions to Clinton’s campaign. She ended up having to pay a $35,000 fine.

In 2006, John Edwards worked part-time for the Fortress Investment Group and made $500,000 (if only ordinary Americans like Edwards purports to represent could make $500,000 working part-time doing virtually nothing…), and he had the audacity to claim his primary reason for working for the group (which primarily manages hedge funds) was educational in nature, in that he wanted to learn how such funds were managed :rolleyes:.

6

Yeah, unfortunately our candidates can’t make half a million dollars and claim they were working primarily for the “educational opportunity” present in a job as a do-nothing consultant for a hedge fund.

It’s also too bad that none of our candidates had their President husband issue a pardon to people who had voted for them despite having cheated the government out of $30m in taxes.

I’ll stipulate to that if you’re willing to stipulate that Hillary Clinton has consistently and repeatedly abused her position of political power pretty much since the day Bubba was elected governor of Arkansas, and that John Edwards is a two-faced snake who has the nerve to claim he’s working for a hedge fund to get an education. And that’s before we bring up the infamous $400 haircut that he gleefully charged to his campaign until he was caught red-handed.

To be honest though, right now by and large the front runner is Hillary Clinton, who is by far the most corrupt Democrat running this year, recent polling suggests Edwards would only capture about 7% of the delegates were the election to be held today, Obama 21% and Hillary 41%. That shows the moral compass of the Dems, who are by and large lining up behind a woman who has had shady real estate deals, terrorist-coddling outbursts, abuse of her position as First Lady (of both Arkansas and the country) on her record in addition to a host of other unsavory acts.

I’m on the Hillary Bandwagon baby, because the moment she has the nomination sealed up America will see that while the GOP has fucked up royally in certain areas over the past 8 years, they still aren’t as devoid of common sense and personal integrity as the Democrats.

7

But-but-but Hillary…

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I’m no fan of the Marc Rich pardon. But it looks like the pardon involved his paying a $100 million dollar fine…I haven’t found a receipt for the money, so I don’t know if he ponied up. In theory, a $100 million dollar payment from a guy owing $30 million should cover it.

Furthermore, I’m not sure a Bush Republican is on solid ground attacking the Clintons for being nice to the super-rich on their taxes. :slight_smile:

Sailboat

9

Don’t you know that any crime committed by any Republican is okay as long as any allegation has ever been made against any Democrat?

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I’m mildly confused here: Fred Thompson gave a routine, if foolish, endorsement of a company which does have a viable product because of a contract he signed before issues came out concerning their practices. He then continued as stipulated in the contract. Since AFAIK, he’s not reupping any endorsement deals right now, so what?

11

Because, at the very least, he’s exploiting the heroism of our soldiers to sell a commercial product, and yeah, I happen to consider that pretty low all by itself.

How could he not know he was doing that when he was doing it?

Contract or no contract, he could have put his foot down. What was ABC radio doing to do - sue him in order to force him to exploit the troops? A big PR win for Thompson, and a big PR headache for ABC.

Besides, is he responsible for his own decisions? I’d hope so. His decision was to give up control of his good name to ABC Radio’s advertisers. Believe it or not, lots of celebs don’t do that, but rather choose to retain control over what endorsements they make. He decided in advance that, for money, he’d be happy to let people like this use his name for their own purposes, without retaining control over who they were or what they might be doing with it.

12

So, tell me about the nefarious things this hedge fund did.

Or are hedge funds intrinsically evil? I’d love to see you make that argument. Hell, I’m far from ready to say that, and I’m waaaay to your left. I’ve even opened up a GD thread for you to make your case.

Feel free to Pit Sen. Clinton over this, and all the other Clinton stuff.

Here’s the deal: I’m not a public utility. Just like you, I should start those threads I feel like starting, post to those threads I feel like posting to.

If you think Clinton deserves Pitting over something, you know where to click to open a Pit thread. Break a leg.

13

I’m actually not talking about the Marc Rich incident, I’m talking about the incident involving the New Square Hasidic Enclave in New York. The enclave voted virtually unanimously for Hillary, several members of the enclave ran afoul of the Federal government when they set up a fake school and cheated their way out of $30m in taxes. Strangely after they voted for Mrs. Clinton, their legal problems went away when the President of the United States pardoned them.

14

Or maybe it’s that the GOP field is extremely Pit-worthy. I haven’t even yet gotten to Rudy and the priest.

Martin, I never realized you had such self-satire skillz, dude! I mean, I agree - and I bet Clinton would have too!

Must admit, if we’re drawing a line between business and personal lives, which side of the line (a) making a radio commercial, and (b) running for President, go on?

Neither exactly qualifies as “personal life,” does it?

15

Frankly, I think this is mostly a lot of noise about nothing much, but I will mention that this LifeLock outfit seems to have pretty much sewn up the market for right-wing commentator endorsements. In addition to Thompson’s plugs, which I hadn’t heard until they were mentioned in this thread, Paul Harvey and Rush Limbaugh (IIRC) have been lending their mellifluous tones in support as well.

16

No, hedge funds are not intrinsically evil. However you have to realize that hedge funds because of their unique nature are not subject to many regulations and consumer protections that mutual funds and other investment companies are subject to.

Mutual funds are required to maintain a certain amount of liquidity as well as avoid conflicts of interests amongst its managers. Hedge funds do not have either requirement. The hedge fund market has also been notoriously plagued with fraud and corruption over the past decade, I believe several years there’s been upwards ofr $1bn/year in fraud concerning hedge funds.

However, since only accredited investors can participate in hedge funds, by and large the rampant fraud and some people losing big was not considered a huge deal. To be an accredited investor you have to have a net income of $200,000/year for the prior two years and evidence to suggest you will have such an income in the upcoming year, or you must have over $1,000,000 in net worth. When it’s the rich playing fast and loose with cash and sometimes getting burned by fraud or et cetera people are less sympathetic. However in the late 90s many pension plans and charities started investing in hedge funds because historically they have outperformed the market dramatically, that is in part why the government has tried to clean up hedge funds with tighter regulations, but so many loopholes to the new regulations exist that they essentially don’t exist.

So in essence part of the problem with someone who wants to run for President being involved in hedge fund management is that it’s a questionable industry. Edwards knows this as he’s rich and savvy, he also knows that it’s how rich people can get even richer. So when he took the job to work for Fortress for a year, he found himself in a situation where he needed to explain it away. Both because he knows hedge funds have a somewhat shaky reputation and because people are going to be curious in general about why a lawyer by trade who has effectively been a politician the last few years has gotten in to fund management. His explanation, “It was for educational purposes, and to make a bit of money.” Yeah John, educational purposes. I’m sure many of the poor people you say you care so much about would love to have a part time consulting job with a hedge fund management company that pays half a million, especially since they’re too poor to even participate in the hedge fund market in the first place.

No, you aren’t a public utility. You’re a source of pollution, exaggeration, and general bullshit about any GOP candidate out there, and there’s no reason for the SDMB community in general to not help me out in bashing this little personal crusade against the GOP candidates that you’ve had going for months now. It’s pathetic, lame, sad, and it’s obvious you just sit at home digging and digging until you specifically find something objectionable about whichever GOP candidate you’ve got your targets on at that moment.

The reason I brought up Hillary’s skeletons is to illustrate a point. All the candidates have skeletons for better or worse, the only thing people like you contribute when you repeatedly present only the negative side of a candidate is the mud-slinging, bullshit type of politics that have spawned so many negative attack ads the last few election cycles that many Americans are growing tired of the entire system. I’d much prefer if rational human beings could debate about candidates based on their stances on the issues. Extraneous bullshit should honestly only be brought up when it has a clear, pressing, and important influence on the election at hand.

This kind of bullshit is akin to the mud-slingers that dug up the fact Grover Cleveland had a child out of wedlock years before in an attempt to ruin him politically.

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Let’s not forget that the company itself is backed by a diversified group of investors and so far I’m not aware of any actual evidence of the company itself being fraudulent or unsound. Just that one individual had an unsound past.

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However, I have every faith that John Goodman was a Dunkin’ Donuts customer looooong before they hired him as his pitchman.

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“It’s part of the contract,” “You can’t expect the [del]individual on-air personality[/del] President to do research on every [del]company[/del] Country he’s invading.”

20

I’ve heard the ads too, and they are particularly slimy-sounding, in terms of their blatant exploitation of pro-troop sentiment.

I would pit ol’ Freddy for imagining that the time these ads are just hitting the airwaves would be a good time to consider a Presidential bid. His opponents are going to have a field day with these spots.