Bigoted Conservative Fringe Group Pressures
Advertisers of Program Featuring Law-Abiding Muslims

From AlterNet:

How else to explain the fact that dozens of major companies promptly pulled their ads from TLC's innocuous new reality show All-American Muslim, thanks to an extremist Christian group's concern about its depiction of the titular citizens living normal lives in front of the lens?

Apparently episodes about Muslims in Dearborn, Mich., doing frothy things like planning weddings, sending their kids off to school, and occasionally facing discrimination was so offensive to the Florida Family Association (whose mission is to "educate people on what they can do to defend, protect, and promote traditional, biblical values") that this fringe group launched an energetic email campaign targeting advertisers. And according to a statement they gave the Washington Post, the campaign worked

And

The reason the FFA objected to the show? It didn't show any terrorists. Really: "The show profiles only Muslims that appear to be ordinary folks while excluding many Islamic believers whose agenda poses a clear and present danger to liberties and traditional values that the majority of Americans cherish." In perhaps one of the most poorly worded press releases I've ever encountered, the group continues, "Many situations were profiled in the show from a Muslim-tolerant perspective while avoiding the perspective that would have created Muslim conflict, thereby contradicting The Learning Channel’s agenda to inaccurately portray Muslims in America." Umm, what? With fail-proof logic like this, it's obvious why dozens of advertisers agreed to pull their advertising — not.

And

Now, after all, a politician is threatening a Lowe's boycott, 13,000 Facebook comments on the company's psuedo-apology, and most declaring it to be bigoted, while a new, fast-growing online petition at Signon.org is directed at the CEOs of all the companies named by FFA. At some point, Lowe's may have to backtrack even further to avoid really having a bad brand.

More here.

Okay, this is going pretty well, I think.

On the one hand, I don't really see this so much as a free speech issue as it is an activism issue. I mean, there is, indeed, free speech on the line here, but the speech that concerns me is what's coming from these right-wing activists and the left-wing backlash they've created by opposing this reality show. That is, television is big business, not a platform from which concerned citizens pontificate about important issues: TLC's All American Muslim is simply a vehicle by which the cable network's owners make a whole lot of money.

Sure, it disturbs me a bit that these Christian bigots are pressuring the show's advertisers in this way--while I don't at all care for reality television, I certainly approve of portraying American Muslims as regular, ordinary people who are not terrorists, which is, in fact, what the vast, vast majority of American Muslims are, regular, ordinary people who are not terrorists. But there is nothing sacred about business ventures that kinda sorta appear to be like "free speech." So I don't like FFA's activism, but they're totally free to do it.

I mean, remember the whole Imus "nappy headed ho" controversy? Some of his defenders cried "censorship" when the shit hit the fan and he was suspended for a few weeks, but it was never about censorship. It was, from the very beginning, a coldly calculated business decision to take him off the air. For his network controllers, it was all about the money, and how the negative public reaction to his on-air racism might cut into the bottom line. In short, the entertainment industry doesn't give a shit about free speech; they give a shit about money, which is the only thing that gets them to do what you want.

Okay, they care about the government, too, but that's not what's going on here.

The bottom line for me is that even though I don't like it when conservative groups gather and shoot what Noam Chomsky has called "flak" at entertainment companies, I fucking love it when liberal groups do the same thing. And I don't want citizens to lose the ability to affect and alter the programming we endure simply because it seems to be a free speech issue. The proper way to respond when conservatives pull shit like this is actually what's happening right now: fight flak with flak.

Lowe's is in a real pickle at the moment. In order to escape a potential boycott from the American Jesus set, they've withdrawn advertising from All American Muslim, and that very act has made very real the potential for a boycott from Americans who support pluralism and religious tolerance. And I think the other companies that have done the same thing may very well be hit by liberal activism, too. In the end, I think the good guys will win this.

And that's democracy.

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