In the wake of Rush Limbaugh’s disparaging Sandra Fluke’s character, over nine corporations have decided to pull their ads from Rush Limbaugh’s radio show. If we recall, Limbaugh commented on Sandra Fluke’s appearance before Congress to weigh in on the need for health insurers to cover contraceptives for women.
Rush’s now infamous comment is as follows: “What does it say about the college co-ed Sandra Fluke, who goes before a congressional committee and essentially says that she must be paid to have sex, what does that make her? It makes her a slut, right? It makes her a prostitute. She wants to be paid to have sex. She’s having so much sex she can’t afford the contraception. She wants you and me and the taxpayers to pay her to have sex. What does that make us? We’re the pimps.”
In the wake of Limbaugh’s comments, backlash ensued and he eventually issued an apology. This apology, however, has failed to stem the tide of advertisers leaving Rush Limbaugh, including: AOL, GEICO, Carobonite, JCPenney, AccuQuote, ServiceMagic, Polycom, Hadeed Carpet and Thompson Creek Windows.
But let’s do some of our own digging on these corporations to see whether or not this was in fact a moral issue, or a PR ploy to make their brand look like virtuous, women’s rights-loving corporate heroes.
GEICO
Apparently, 15 minutes can do more than just save you 15% or more on car insurance. Fifteen minutes of sleuthing on GEICO can lead us to a company that is home to spineless PR tactics. In fact, it was just a few years ago in 2010 that GEICO fired their voice over actor Douglas Baxter for lambasting the Tea Party. Baxter was caught on a voicemail saying that FreedomWorks’ seems to have a “percentage of people that are mentally retarded who are working for FreedomWorks and who are following it,” or as he has since put it, he “inquired as to their intelligence level.” He also questioned how FreedomWorks will handle stories when one of their “members does actually kill somebody” and proceeds to badger them directly, “wondering if you’ve got a PR spinning routine planned for that or are you just gonna take it when it happens.” At the time, of course, the Left was calling for a boycott of GEICO and took every measure possible to make sure that GEICO was seen as bowing to the whims of the Tea Party. And the Huffington Post was quick to track the story until it no longer became a story. So it would appear that GEICO is on the Liberal “do not friend” list.
Not so fast. After first pulling ads from Glenn Beck’s program, GEICO wants to make clear that they never desired to run their ads on Limbaugh’s program in the first place, stating that: “In 2004, GEICO instructed our affiliates not to run our ads during Rush Limbaugh’s program. This week an ad was placed incorrectly on the show.”
To the trained eye, “this week an ad was placed incorrectly on the show” sounds like quite a good bit of what’s crudely known as “ass covering”. But because GEICO is taking the “high road” and distancing itself from all things Limbaugh, the company can salvage itself and appear all sorts of lovely.
Now, to be fair to GEICO, this is probably a PR spin on their part. They would like to offend the least amount of Left and Right voters as they possibly can – because after all, everyone that drives needs car insurance. However, the continued back and forth and catering to the latest whim of the Left and Right appears not only disingenuous, but downright hypocritical. GEICO should not be held up as a company that stands by virtues – but rather – as a company without a backbone.
The sensible thing to do would be to ignore much of what comes from Corporate on behalf of GEICO. The more sensible move would probably be to drop GEICO for its severe lack of a spine.
Carbonite
Carbonite, an online data backup service, recently released this statement from their CEO David Friend:
“No one with daughters the age of Sandra Fluke, and I have two, could possibly abide the insult and abuse heaped upon this courageous and well-intentioned young lady. Mr. Limbaugh, with his highly personal attacks on Miss Fluke, overstepped any reasonable bounds of decency. Even though Mr. Limbaugh has now issued an apology, we have nonetheless decided to withdraw our advertising from his show. We hope that our action, along with the other advertisers who have already withdrawn their ads, will ultimately contribute to a more civilized public discourse.”
This charming bit of tug at your heartstrings emotionalizing was clearly meant to illicit feelings of goodwill toward the brand and showcase its “we don’t tolerate name calling” kind of heroism. It’s unfortunate that Carbonite’s CEO didn’t feel the same way in 2006 when the company began posting fake reviews on Amazon.com. Furthermore, the same heroic CEO was made aware of the posts in 2008 but failed to have them removed until this blog from the NY Times called them out on their shenanigans. Given that these posts were around the same time the company was first starting, it defies believability that higher-ups weren’t aware of the situation earlier than reported (however, this is simply speculation). But more to the point, it undercuts Carbonite’s moral high ground, as anyone who works in consumer products knows that writing your own reviews is not only unethical, but stacks the odds in your favor and against your competition.
Carbonite, it seems, is facing a bit of a backlash for throwing all of its eggs in the liberal PR basket. As of March 6th, the Carbonite stock price plummeted 12% in the wake of CEO David Friend’s announcement. Apparently the market doesn’t take too kindly to blatant acts of pandering.
JCPenney
JCPenney has recently come under new management, and its pulling of its ads from Rush Limbaugh’s show is consistent with their bringing on Ellen Degeneres to be their spokeswoman (ie: decidedly more Left). However, as early as 2011, the company was mired in a search based marketing scandal that allowed it to rank at the top of the Google search lists on a wide variety of products, likely reaping in substantial profits for the company. By using an agency that employed black hat search marketing techniques, Penney was able to rank #1 in Google organic search for phrases like “samsonite carry on luggage” – above even samsonite.com.
Of course, JCPenney issued an apology, and, as anyone who asks for an apology can attest, sought forgiveness (and probably forgetfulness.) That Limbaugh’s apology is judged by Penney to be insincere while their apology maintains veracity is another example of corporate hypocrisy. On a larger scale, JCPenney’s scheme potentially stole millions of dollars in revenue from other companies – yet Penney’s would be loath to return said profits.
As with many big box retailers, JCPenney also employed overseas workers (or what the Left commonly call sweat shops) to make their goods. In 2003, a particular shop was in the line of fire for gouging out a worker’s eye. And in 2011, JCPenney failed to make good on its promise to support the family’s of workers who died in a factory fire. In fact, it was a subject of an email and petition on Change.org.
Now, JCPenney will play the hero card when pulling their advertisements from Limbaugh’s program, claiming with grandiosity that their actions were due to disparaging the character of Sandra Fluke. Of course, this is a victory for the Left. But if the Left bothered to pay attention to JCPenney’s recent scandals, it’d be hard to see how Penney’s could take the high ground on any issue.
The Moral of the Story
The Left and those sympathetic with Sandra Fluke will champion the stories of advertiser fallout as a clear case of company’s recognizing Limbaugh’s moral depravity. Consider it no such thing. As these few examples show, the corporate politics at play are little more than PR ploys and ass covering. To champion the boycott of advertising by company’s willing to cater to political whims is to miss the point here. A personal moral stance against Limbaugh is one thing, but for the Left to use these businesses from corporate America as a shining example of winning the moral high ground is in itself a bit of hypocrisy.
