Tuesday, October 18, 2005

THE AMERICAN TALIBAN

Call it a new, 11th Commandment: “Thou shalt not advertise” if the religious primitives smell sin.

You know how it is when you start to read an article and end up clicking on the links provided
for other information or points of view.

Well this morning was one of those occasions. I have just spent the last three hours flitting about from link to link with morbid fascination. Each leap from website to website, caused my mouth to open wider and wider, not to mention the expletives coming out in disbelief. In fact I feel a chill in my heart and a sense of dread at the insidiousness of a campaign being conducted in America, with great success.

Spurred on by a biblical injunction evangelicals call “The Great Commission,” and emboldened by George W. Bush’s re-election, which is perceived as a “mandate from God,” the Christian right has launched a series of boycotts and pressure campaigns aimed at corporate America — and at its sponsorship of entertainment, programs and activities the Christers don’t like.

Proctor and Gamble, a corporate giant, has pulled millions of dollars in advertising from TV shows such as Will and Grace and Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. Even firing an Executive employee for connections to a bill in Ohio regarding discrimination of gays.

Proctor and Gamble have privately acknowledged "that the groups have turned out to be larger, better funded, better organized and more sophisticated than the company had imagined."

Desperate Housewives has lost advertising revenue from several large companies because it is deemed salacious. Even Southpark has had ads pulled.

Nissan, Goodyear, Castrol, Kraft, Johnson, Hasbro and even Microsoft have back pedalled on advertising and sponsorship as a result of threats of boycotts and pressure.

Even the New York Times has bowed to pressure:

By consistently framing the issue as a civil rights matter — gays fighting for the right to be treated like everyone else — we failed to convey how disturbing the issue is in many corners of American social, cultural, and religious life.” Oh, “disturbing” to whom? Why, to the Christers, of course — whose e-mail complaint campaigns against the Times are legion: It’s the paper the fundamentalists love to hate. So why is the Times — one of the few newspapers in the latest available study of circulation released earlier this year to significantly increase circulation rather than lose it — feeling the need to kowtow to the religious opponents of gay marriage? The paper’s willingness to do so is about as frightening a testimony to creeping theocracy as one could imagine.

Behind it all is the AFA (American Family Association), whose name should be changed, in my opinion anyway, to American Fascists Association.

Their website supposedly aims to preach family values within a christian doctrine, but instead preaches intolerance, and narrow mindedness to a frightening degree, considering the power they are wielding within the corporate structure of America. This power comes from the sheer number of active members of this society.

The Rev. Donald E. Wildmon is the Chairman of the AFA, and if ever there was a case for the appearance of the "anti-Christ" on earth he is it.

The article that I have pulled quotes from has cited the 1950's witchhunt of communists in America, a reign of terror, which started in much the same way, and which lasted for a quarter of a century and lasted another 18 years after Senator Joe McCarthy was dead and buried.

All this could be described as the "Pandora's Box" which Bush has allowed, or should I say encouraged to be opened.

Scary stuff. I wonder how long it will be before it creeps into Britain?

Kats

3 Comments:

Blogger Kim Ayres said...

But that's democracy for you Kats - the ones with the biggest mouths get their own way

6:02 PM  
Blogger kats said...

You could say that Kim, I call it bullying fundamentalism.

Something America, or rather Bush, has started a war to eradicate?

Kats

6:40 PM  
Blogger Jez said...

Ah...corporate America...such sweet words...

1:48 PM  

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