Don’t forget to keep your business away from any store where the employees say “happy holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas”!
Misleading thread title!
What’s this? A conservative frightened of competition in addition to being terrified of social change? God, you must wee in your knickers every time someone so much as mentions buggery, you delicate flower! Whatever will you do when that narrow margin you have dies and leaves the world to people who don’t care about miscegenation?
Some liberals should put you on the endangered species list. After all, it wasn’t that long ago California was voting for Ronald Reagan.
Then why are you complaining? You didn’t get to bake that cake and eat it too, too bad. Maybe you should boycott a company with only one store in the whole county so that way you don’t have to suffer for your beliefs.
It is very ineffective to boycott a company for something like this. And no, it does not compare at all to the boycotting of segregated buses in the 60’s. Cinemark or it’s CEO didn’t pass prop. 8. Voters passed prop. 8. And it’s only through voting that it will be overturned, not by boycotting movie theaters or picketing outside of them.
So if you can fool yourself into thinking your personal crusade against their CEO is going to have any effect then you can also fool yourself into thinking that you are giving money to their employees who did vote against 8 and that donated some of their money to fight it; and that way you can make your life a little easier and just go watch a movie.
That’s the problem with these things. You never know who you’ll end up in bed with. cite cite cite cite cite
I suggest seeing movies in their first week and never buying anything from the concession stands. The profit realized by the theatre from Miller will be trivial, possibly even negative.
Not even if they’re showing Deadwood: The Movie?
d&r
What? The way they betrayed our commitment and our loyalty? Just ending like that, without warning or consultation? Don’t speak that name again.
Good point. Most theaters make basically nothing on ticket sales during the first couple of weeks that a movie runs.
If i like a cinema, i will often wait until near the end of a movie’s run to go and see it, knowing that more of my money will got to the cinema itself, rather than the movie company. And if you don’t like a cinema much, seeing it in the first week and not buying anything at the concession stand at least assures that basically all you money will go to the movie producers.
I notice that nobody’s dealt with my point above, which is: even if Miller was entirely alone in boycotting Cinemark, he does not feel the need to fund his own oppression. I have no idea why everyone seems so astonished at this fairly basic and sensible position. What, are we required to do business with people who are using the money they make from us to campaign against our equality?
I agree completely. Organizing an actual boycott is great and all if that’s what you want to do, but its completely reasonable to take the position that you simply don’t want your money going people like this. Its the principle of the thing.
Because I like going to the movies, and if I have to drive an additional forty five minutes to get to a non-Cinemark theater, I’m probably not going to bother most of the time? I thought that part would be pretty obvious from the OP.
No, but if they’re voting in favor of (or, more to the point, donating large sums of money to) laws like this results in some sort of backlash, people are going to be less likely to vote (or donate) to them. Plus, the boycott itself is a tool for raising awareness of the issue.
And I don’t see where anyone compared it to the Montgomery bus boycott.
I doubt it will have any effect on the CEO. I don’t expect to bring Cinemark to its knees. But we are in the middle of a huge recession, and theaters are already in trouble from competition with Netflix, DVDs, on demand cable, and streaming internet video services. A local boycott can make enough of a dent in a theater’s profits that Cinemark will decide that it’s more profitable to sell of its California theaters. How likely is that to happen? I don’t know. But I think it’s worth a shot.
Okay, I’ll take a stab at it:
He’s not paying to fund his own oppression; he’s paying to see a movie! The fact that people may do something with the few pennies profit they will take home from the dollars you spend with their business does not mean you have paid them in order to facilitate whatever it is you’re opposed to. You have paid them for the service/products they offer which you want to avail yourself of.
Of course you aren’t required to, and it’s questions such as this that harm your credibility. If anyone is astonished at this “basic and sensible” position, it’s because it’s neither basic nor sensible.
Boycotting can be an effective tool to influence the way a company does business, but to boycott as a single individual is merely tilting at windmills. It reminds me of an old George Carlin gag where Carlin as a newsman reports that a man has barricaded himself inside his house…but he’s alone and unarmed and no one is paying any attention.
Neither will anyone be paying attention to Miller’s noble self-flaggellation as he deprives himself of enjoyment that he would otherwise derive in order to make a point that no one is aware of but himself.
(And besides, Miller is very likely doing business with Prop. 8 supporters every day anyway, and probably paying them far more than he ever would to Cinemark’s CEO. You can’t try to deprive everyone you disagree with of your money or you’d scarcely be able to spend it at all.)
Boycotts are only effective when the boycottee knows he/it’s being boycotted, and he/it considers the numbers of those doing the boycotting to be sufficient to result in unacceptable losses.
IMHO, it would be better to agitate where it will have some effect, and not let high-minded but ineffectual nobility deprive me of an otherwise enjoyable aspect of my life.
For that matter, I could withhold my valuable patronage because I think his dog is ugly.
A boycott can be a very powerful tactic, as witness MLK and the bus boycott. But its tricky, it demands a great deal of unity, first off. As nearly universal agreement as can be possible, the community concerned must largely agree on the target. If you got a list of 50 companies that pissed you off, its a lot tougher, the impact is diffused.
Now, I don’t live out there, so this Cinemark means squat to me, and I go to about two movies a year. Is this the right target? Maybe not, as I mentioned above, if they are likely to go broke anyway…well, I’m sure you take my point. From what I gather, the Mormons seem to be a major villain in this piece, but how the Hell do you boycott the Mormons?
Tactics, pals and gals, tactics. A well-placed and thoroughly organized boycott can hit like a hammer. But a poorly thought out threat that fizzles just makes you look weak, and causes our mutual enemies to enlicken their chops.
Who can call such a boycott, and make it stick? What group or person has that much clout in the community, that is widely accepted to speak on your behalf? If there is no such, then that is step one.
Unity. Absitively, posolutely essential. You tell me you got that, and I’ll say far out and go polish my dancing shoes, to be smartly dressed at your victory party.
Careful, there. I’m not even slightly astonished that Miller wants to boycott something, nor need his reasons matter to anyone other than himself. I just thought I’d point out that if he doesn’t want the chain to get any of his money, but he still likes to see movies, there is a strategy he can use. Additionally, he can go out of his way to cost the theatres money, i.e. littering up the bathrooms, but that seems more frat-prank than protest.
Unless I’m not counted in “everybody”, in which case never mind.
Then I guess it’s a good thing I’m not the only one doing this, isn’t it?
My apologies. The OP made it appear you were, and, being involved in other threads and only skimming this thread (and not particularly of the belief that one must read every single post to a thread before posting), I must have missed where you said otherwise.
You know, a majority of voters in your state voted for that proposition. Shouldn’t you just bail on California entirely if you were to be consistent in your efforts?
I know that sounds silly - but considering that there are calls for a boycott of Sundance because it is in Utah - maybe the silliness of this suggestion ought to make people consider how ridiculous that one sounds.
Spend your money as you see fit - hell, I still refuse myself to send any funds toward Roman Polanski or Jane Fonda. But I don’t kid myself into thinking that they’re hurting financially from my choices.
You should go to the Tiburon Playhouse. You would be helping to support a locally owned business, and keeping my mother in a job (she’s the manager)!
Are they opening a branch in Deadwood by any chance?
I hear they serve really good BBQ pork sandwiches…something about a secret ingredient?