After reading these two posts at Newsbusters and RedState concerning Sargento cheese’s decision to honor the left’s boycott demand of Glenn Beck I sent them this letter via their contact page:
Good afternoon.
As a person of Sicilian decent a good cheese is very important to me. Whether making homemade Chicken parm or a simple pizza the right cheese can make or break a good dish.
My local market carries your cheese, although times are tougher the quality of your product has justified the little bit extra I’ve had to pay to make sure the meals I cook are up to snuff.
Although your company has a fine eye for cheese your eye for politics doesn’t seem to be too keen.
Your decision to publicly pull advertising from the Glenn Beck show on behalf of an advocacy group supporting this white House is beneath you.
I’m not a big fan of Beck but I am a big fan of free speech and the right to disagree and critique with the government. I have taken the liberty of examining Mr. Beck and have decided that your determination that he is propagating “hate speech” is poppycock.
Since you have decided to publicly to take a side it behooves me to do the same. The quality of your product not withstanding I find myself compelled to find another cheese maker who can concentrate on producing their product rather than repressing speech.
When you decide to reconsider your decision as publicly as you made it, I will be happy to reconsider mine.
Thank you.
Redstate has contact info for them and others but I prefer the direct contact page, feel free to follow the link if you agree.
Update: The RedState story now contains this word from Sargento:
“I had never heard of the Color of Change organization until it was mentioned by a consumer who called us and claimed we were influenced by them, and I notice you have mentioned it as well. This group did not contact Sargento and did not influence our decision.”
That’s rather amazing when you consider the following:
“I can confirm that Sargento has instructed our media buyer to not buy advertising that would appear during the Glenn Beck Show,” Gannon said in an e-mail to the Business & Media Institute on Aug. 14. “We market our products to people regardless of their political affiliations. As a business, we sometimes disagree with the administration’s policies. Yet we do not want to be associated with hateful speech used by either liberal or conservative television hosts.”
I would like to know when and how he formed that opinion particularly when you consider this e-mail response they sent to a person advocating the boycott:
We deeply appreciate your reaching out to us and sharing your comments and concerns about Sargento ads appearing during “The Glenn Beck Show.” We sat down with the marketing department to talk about it and I learned that we buy time periods not specific programs. But in any event, they’ve made the decision to exclude that program from our future ad rotation. Simply stated, Sargento ads won’t be airing during that show. Again, thanks for contacting us.
Pat Lombardo
Sargento Consumer Affairs Department
I suspect it’s going to come down to whose business they would rather lose.
Update 2 RSMcCain puts it in perspective
The Left doesn’t have to add more targets to their boycott list in order to damage conservative media. Put the hit on Beck — impose what might be called a political discount on the value of his advertising — and the boycotters have thereby demonstrated their ability to do the same to anyone whom they should decide to target next.
To abandon Glenn Beck and throw him under the bus — to sacrifice him to the Left — would be an act of appeasement akin to Neville Chamberlain giving Hitler the Sudetenland.
He is exactly right, they can’t beat Fox in the ratings so they will use this plan. Sargento if they were smart could have dropped their ads without a comment when the cycle ended, after all Mr. Beck doesn’t have a divine right to their business, but once they made the announcement they took sides.
Update 3: Legal Insurrection looks at the bright side.
