Robert Knight of the American Family Association gazes upon the havoc that his flying monkeys have unleashed upon Ford, and by havoc-releasing-flying-monkeys I mean he pats himself on the back for being around to kick Ford while it was already down. He derives no small satisfaction from the idea that while, sure, he can’t prove that the massive AFA boycott of Ford over their gay-lovin’ ways actually hurt Ford in the least, surely it didn’t help, and close is close enough to warrant a press release.
Have you driven Ford crazy lately?
That would be a good question for the nation’s business media to ask the American Family Association (AFA), which has been boycotting Ford Motor Company for the past year.
Since March 2006, the AFA and 18 other pro-family organizations have targeted Ford over the company’s donations to homosexual political groups and advertisements in homosexual-themed magazines. You’d never know it from media reports.
True enough, the closest thing I’ve seen to regular ‘media reports’ about the boycott are Pam’s occassional mocking posts; her posts every couple of months on the subject make her seem comparatively obsessed next to the deafening silence of every one else on the topic, up to and including Ford which has, as always, slightly more urgent problems:
What’s new: Ford Motor Co. has completed excavation of industrial waste at nine of 12 sites where paint sludge was found at the 900-acre former iron mining site in Ringwood. That brings the total amount of lead-tainted sludge and contaminated soil removed since 2004 to 25,000 tons, Ford spokesman Jon Holt said….
Ford and Ringwood continue to disagree over paying for cleanup work. Ford says the borough has accrued penalties of nearly $17 million — $32,500 per day since November 2005 — for not complying with an EPA order to help pay for the work. Borough officials replied that the town has complied by offering to pay for some of the work and by spending more than $500,000 to aid residents affected by sinkholes that appeared near two areas being cleaned up.
Nearly two dozen salaried workers were involuntarily separated from Ford Motor Co. in April, a company spokeswoman confirmed.Ford said the permanent layoffs came before Ford CEO Alan Mulally told shareholders and journalists that layoffs likely would not be necessary for the struggling automaker to meet its turnaround objectives.
A plummeting new-vehicle market share at Ford Motor Co., maybe the sickest of Detroit’s Big Three automakers, has led to anemic customer traffic. In 1999, the Pacifico dealership sold about 300 new and used vehicles a month; in 2007, it expects to sell 190 a month, which is an improvement from a nadir in 2002, when vehicle sales sank to 140…
Economic reality is hitting Ford auto dealers. According to a leading trade publication, the Philadelphia region – even with the closings that have taken place – has the third-highest concentration of Ford dealerships in the nation. There are just too many of them, dealers say, and one-fifth of the 50 or 60 Ford dealers in the region could eventually close.
Everyone knows that Ford is hanging from a noose that it tied for itself. The AFA is only embarassing itself when it tries to insinuate that less than a million people taking the time to sign an online petition is at all responsible for Ford’s 13 billion-with-a-b loss in 2006.
#
Ford reported a loss of $12.7 billion in 2006.
#More than 700,000 people have signed an on-line petition supporting the boycott.
#AFA’s e-mail list, with updates on the boycott, has grown to more than 3 million.
Why would an organization comprised of what I assume are adults look at media coverage of the slow, choking death of an American industry and whine, “hey, we helped!” when the rest of the grown-ups neglect to mention their absolutely trivial year-long hissy over something about gay people?
Short answer: because they’re crazy.
With Ford closing plants, laying off employees, hemorrhaging red ink and a facing a dealer uprising in Texas, wouldn’t you think that business reporters would include at least a mention of the boycott in their coverage of Ford’s woes? Alas, no…
…But the company’s willingness to alienate large numbers of Middle American consumers in order to appease the tiny segment of the population (less than 2 percent) that describes itself as “homosexual” should also be news.
CMI’s National Cultural Values Survey found that only 14 percent of Americans believe homosexual behavior is always acceptable. In contrast, 49 percent of adult Americans say homosexual behavior is always wrong. 46 percent attend church at least several times per month…
…Ford declined to sponsor the 2007 Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) Media Awards, which it had in previous years….(GLAAD, by the way, reviews all Hollywood movie and TV scripts to ensure only positive portrayals of homosexuality. GLAAD wants to keep from the public any hint of the many tragic consequences of the homosexual lifestyle, which include a sharply shortened lifespan and higher rates of substance abuse, promiscuity, STDs, domestic violence and depression.) (emphasis mine)…
…The networks reported the beginning of the boycott, but then hurried from the scene like accident witnesses who don’t want to get involved.
The selective reporting might just say something about media priorities, the power of the homosexual lobby, and the media’s fear of giving even a little credit to Christian conservatives lest it embolden them.
Better to leave this particular vehicle parked in the shadows, down by the river, where, GLAAD willing, it will be allowed to rust in peace.
What the fuck was that? Are all of their press releases like that? Jesus christ on a cracker, Robert, is there not a single person in your whole organization that can write a damn press release? Here, let me help:
1. Brevity, brevity, brevity. You are writing something with the hope that someone will see it and find that it is not only newsworthy but also will fit in some random space they have to fill. Keep it short and sweet and to the point. Skip the cute intros, as most newspapers already have douchebags for the writing of cutesy human interest pieces.
2. Inverted, fucking, pyramid, man. In this case, congratulating yourself for Ford’s lack of competent leadership belongs at the top of the page, assertions that homosexuals live short, miserable, virus-soaked lives goes at the bottom.
3. Leave conspiracy theories about the powerful gay lobby out of the press release. For the love of god, what if a real newspaper actually wanted to run one of your releases, then they glance at your website and find that you’ve been trash talking them left and right and seem to think that they’re in the thrall of what you sneeringly dismiss as ’2% of the population’? Which is it, man? Are gays such a laughably small portion of the population that Ford should cease wasting money on them posthaste lest they piss off the massively more influential middle-America petty jackass market, or are gays a power-hungry unified group with the national media’s balls in a vice?
Maybe you should just give up and let Pam take care of your media exposure needs. I think in the end you’ll find that having a lesbian mocking you once every couple of months is actually far less embarassing than trying to write on your own behalf.
The AFA argument to boycott Ford products is amazing. They cite biblical beliefs that Ford is evil for advertising in gay publications. So AFA, is it better to support products made by pagon or non-christian countries? The AFA is just a group of goofs that exist just to stir-up trouble. They think their silly little boycott has actually hurt Ford (sorry AFA, it’s the crappy products hurting Ford not the AFA whinning).