A modest proposal.
The Rev. Donald Wildmon
American Family Association
Anytown, USA
Reverend—
Hi! How’s it going? —Oh, I know: we have our differences. In fact, you represent pretty much everything I think to be wrong with this world, with the possible exception of business shorts—you don’t wear business shorts, do you?
Good.
Despite all that, I refuse to believe there can be no common ground between any two people. We are people, after all; we have wants, we have needs, we have mothers and fathers, if we’re pricked we bleed, we like extra helpings of whatever it is we especially like to eat. Surely there is somewhere, somehow, some way our interests can be in alignment, and we can work together to the enrichment of us both, and the detriment of neither.
It’s one of those possible alignments I’d like to discuss with you now.
I had the idea when I first read about the boycott you’ve announced of the Home Depot. I will say that I admire your gumption, and your gall, and your persistence, but let’s, just the two of us, be honest with each other for a moment: we both know how this ends. It ends just like your boycotts of Ford, and of Disney, and of Citigroup, of American Airlines and Allstate, of Pepsi and Coca-Cola, of Wal-Mart and Kraft: with a whimper, not a bang. —Oh, you’ll get a flurry of press, and a shower of new donations, thanks to the announcement. And maybe the board of a charity somewhere out there on which a Home Depot executive sits will have to cut a program or let go a staffer due to budget cuts, and you can link that program or that staffer however tangentially to the fight for marriage equality or one of those “gay celebrations” you keep going on about, and you can take credit for that. And then next quarter when the Home Depot announces a drop in revenue that’s all but inevitable in the current economic climate, you’ll take credit for that, too. —And then you’ll announce your work is done, the boycott is now over, and besides you’re on to more important things, like look! Over there!
I’m sorry, Reverend, but the gag’s got whiskers. People are starting to catch on. You need to up your game.
And I and dozens, no, thousands, tens of thousands of writers and artists and musicians and cartoonists and photographers and actors and filmmakers and conceptualists, need—buzz. Publicity.
Attention.
Here’s what I have in mind: you set up a webpage. Nothing fancy, just a simple form attached to a reasonably robust database. The page would allow someone like me to enter the particulars of my project: what it’s called, what it is, how to find it. And then all of the things you might find objectionable about it. You could provide a checklist, to save on typing, and I could just tick off check marks next to occult content, drug use, profanity, explicit sexual content, fluid conceptions of sexuality, suspiciously leftist political cant. Maybe provide a text box so I can paste in some choice excerpts.
You then take the data provided and have an intern whip up a personalized boycott page. “BOYCOTT! The City of Roses promotes the homosexual agenda! Judge for yourself by reading the appalling excerpts below.” —I get shivers just thinking about it.
See, it’s the retail approach. The shotgun approach. The grass-roots autonomous viral heat-seeking meme-thing. Your followers are suddenly exposed to the overwhelming tide of filth out there on the internet, and to your valiant efforts to stem that tide—and, best of all, because art is so often made by starving artists, who run out of health insurance and have to take second jobs and end up delaying, curtailing, or even abandoning projects unfinished from time to time, well—think of all the credit you’ll be able to take! Your success rate will shoot through the roof, and you won’t even have to lift a finger.
And us?
Well, we’ll get to marvel at the surge of traffic and attention and revel in the outpouring of well-wishes and good cheer that come from all over the country whenever you announce one of your boycotts.
It’s a total win-win situation, Reverend.
Think it over.
—posted 5215 days ago
