You’re right, an actual incitement to violence would be illegal, I should have said, “He can go on the air and say, ‘Fuck the niggers and kikes,’” and that should be perfectly legal. If the public doesn’t like it, they can vote with their wallets. They should absolutely not, under any circumstances, try to get the government to squash speech they don’t like. There is no way one can support that action and claim they support the first ammendment.
No I didn’t.
That should be perfectly legal, yes. I think the public WOULD vote with their wallets and not listen. I think they already do.
The Michael Richards thing gave me a lot of faith in people (other than Richards). They saw true vitriol, and didn’t need to be told what to do. The club owners saw hate and said, even if he puts butts in the seats, it ain’t worth it. They actually probably went against their wallets.
Still horseshit. The customers didn’t “threaten” any companies in any improper way. They just effectively said to the producers, as I noted above, “I don’t like your product, I won’t buy your product, and I won’t support any sponsor who funds the production and sale of your product”.
No customer is morally obligated to go on supporting a company that does things they don’t like. If I’m opposed to, say, animal testing, it’s only reasonable for me to refuse to buy products from companies that support animal testing. Similarly, if I don’t like Don Imus’s show, why should I give money to companies that support it?
You’re the one being the crybaby here. You don’t like the outcome of the boycott proposal, and you can’t come up with any persuasive legal, economic, or ethical argument against the actions of the boycotters. So you resort to calling them “pussies” and “nannies” and “pathetic” and “bitter” and so forth in the hopes of distracting attention from the weakness of your reasoning.
First of all, if you were harmed by that restaurant and weren’t spreading falsehoods about your experiences (which is key), then you aren’t being a jerk by warning people to stay away. If the experiences were that bad, then you would be a conscientious consumer to warn others. Haven’t you ever told someone, “Hey, I wouldn’t buy X if I were you”? Why is that so bad and undemocratic?
Second of all, if your experiences were horrible enough to convince people to stay away, then maybe that business should be ruined. If you told me to stay away from a restaurant because it literally stinks, but I liked the food, I’d tell you to fuck off. As would most people. But if you told me you saw someone sticking their dick in the masala and you showed me video footage, I might stay away.
In the case of Imus, we basically have photo evidence of the guy sticking his dick in the masala. At first, the head honchos were like, “Well, maybe the dick taste will go away after 2 weeks.” But then they heard the outcry and realized the masala and everything touching the masala will be tainted for quite a while. So they’ve decided to stop selling the dickly masala.
Of course, people are free to get the dickly masala if they want it. But people shouldn’t have to sell it if they don’t want to. No one forced CBS or NBC to do anything except reevaluate the quality of the product they distribute. I don’t think they would have done anything if it hadn’t been for Sharpton, but that doesn’t mean he forced them to do anything. How could a guy who’s so unpopular and so hated have the power to force multiple billion-dollar corporations to do anything?
…I would show you a guy with a dick that was smarting like hell. Kids, do not stick your dick in the masala, that stuff is spicy.
Yes, you did.
Unless of course they are French, and under the age of 26. Oh, I just realized why your name sounded so familiar. I can’t see this going anywhere.
It was a dumb question.
That is the most dishonest post I’ve seen. I DON’T believe companies should be able to fire anyone for any reason.
I don’t believe IBM should be permitted to lay off all of their Asians, or women or people below 5’6". What the hell is your point? What does that have to do with anything?
Your argument gets the questions it merits.
And how is this different from what happened with Don Imus again?
I’ve made my opinions on this clear. And, I understand why people don’t agree with me. Hell, these are actually opinions that I’ve reversed in the past few years; I’d have been on the other side.
I’m not on that side because this is how I see this playing out. In the next few weeks, no more than a few months, there will be some sort of national outcry about hip hop stations. It’s already happening, but there’s still bits of Imus meat floating in the water. But, the talk of double standards and hate speech from rappers will get louder.
The outcry is going to swell up from two sides, too. From people pissed about the Imus thing and having some weird belief in retribution, and people who genuinely feel that there is too much hate speech of all kinds on the radio/television and this is an effective technique, but were emboldened by Imus. There will be one popular song that has a good line that they can particularly sink their teeth into.
This will happen even faster if Sharpton goes after another target, but I think he won’t. If he does (as he has promised) the retribution group will get emboldened.
These stations rely on advertisers too. You will see groups of white guys threatening boycotts of advertisers on hip hop stations. Hell, they’re probably the same advertisers as were in question here. It’s going to work.
I’m going to feel that it’s a cowardly move then too.
But your opinions aren’t consistent. I think they would be more convincing if they were.
Ridiculous. If I threatened the CEO of an Imus sponsor (or a hip-hop station sponsor) with physical violence unless he withdrew his sponsorship, that would be cowardly. If I spread slanderous lies about such sponsors in order to sabotage their business, that would be cowardly.
But there is nothing in the least cowardly about saying straight out to a corporate sponsor: “I don’t like [Show X], and if you continue to support [Show X], I will not reward you by buying your products or services.”
Nobody so far has come up with even a halfway-decent argument explaining why we should consider such a position ethically wrong in any way.
Like I said: if I don’t like a particular product, why should I voluntarily give my money to companies that support it? How can it possibly be unethical for free-market consumers simply to decline to patronize companies that are doing things they don’t approve of?
So, you can’t see this heading in the other direction ever?
Will your opinions be consistent when it’s white guys getting car companies to pull their ads from any magazine/radio station/television station that supports some singer who used “nigga” or “ho” in a song?
Mine will be. That is not a legitimate way to get your point across.
Because the threat is divorced from the product. The threat wasn’t saying, “I won’t listen to Imus.” The threat was, hey GM, who pays for advertising, we’re going to boycott YOUR product so that no one can hear this guy say things that I don’t like.
If you don’t like GM’s product, by all means, don’t buy it. If you don’t like MSNBC’s product, don’t watch it. But, if you don’t like MSNBC’s product and you use GM’s product in order to get MSNBC’s product silenced, then your boycott was dishonest. You didn’t rally enough people to stop watching MSNBC’s show, you rallied enough people to spook their sponsors. It’s a much lower bar; GM would like to advertise on MSNBC, but it certainly isn’t worth all this trouble. The boycott was divorced from the product.
Well guess what, if he does that over the publicly owned, federally licensed, government regulated broadcast airwaves,
[RIGHT]Bold=CMC[/RIGHT]they can’t fire him, but if what he does is bad enough the radio station disappears, and it’s been that way for quite a while,
of course while the FCC is more concerned about bare breasts than racist/sexist epithets the Congress can change that anytime they want to.
CMC fnord!
The players accepted his apology and they are receiving hate mail.
Nope. The so-called “threat” is in opposition to the sponsor’s sponsorship of the product as well as the product itself. I’m boycotting the product itself because I don’t like it, and I’m also boycotting the sponsors because I disapprove of their support. In both cases, the “threat” is aimed directly at corporate behavior that I don’t like: no divorce involved.
Right. And if I don’t approve of GM’s or MSNBC’s activities, then I also won’t buy their products, and there’s nothing dishonest about that.
Similarly, if I don’t approve of, say, Shell’s policies in Nigeria, I won’t buy Shell gasoline. If I don’t approve of Ford’s lobbying against emissions regulations, I won’t buy Ford cars. I’m not being dishonest in any way: I’m simply refusing to use my consumer dollars to reward corporate behavior that I don’t like.
I swear to god that I didn’t read that article before, but this part makes me speed up the timeline on my previous post:
"Ms. Stringer’s pastor, the Rev. DeForest Soaries, announced today a broader effort to improve the way people talk about one another. He said a town hall meeting would be held at Rutgers within 30 days to find specific ways to improve the level of dialogue.
He said executives of the music industry would be among those invited along with the clergy and youth groups. Rap music lyrics have been blamed for popularizing the use of terms such as “ho.”"