In previous articles on this website, we have said that today’s business class, even the most powerful sections of it, are discovering that it does not pay to be on the hit list of the Media Class. There are so many ways in which the Media Class can make life very difficult, using one or more of its constituent groups to target a corporation and then regularly identifying and amplifying bad publicity.
Environmental groups, homosexual campaign groups, feminist groups, race groups and organized labor are all willing to provide the shock troops against a corporation or industry knowing there will be guaranteed sympathetic media publicity. These “activist” groups do not have to be large or to have armies of volunteers. Just a few paid officials will do, together with a handful of agit-prop students and drop-outs. The media cameras and reporters can be relied upon to conceal the small numbers involved, so long as the issue is one that fits with the Media Class agenda. The same media that will totally ignore some big demonstrations (Christian, pro-life, pro-war, pro death penalty etc.) will camp out with and outnumber a handful of misfits if the cause has media approval.
Wal-Mart has long been on the receiving end of bad media publicity in the US. This is because the company has been seen as “conservative” due to its family origins and because it has never caved to organized labor. One result of being union-free has been that Wal-Mart has become the biggest company in the world and this the Media Class and its Leftist foot soldiers have found intolerable. Consequently, any little squabble involving Wal-Mart has had the media cameras and reporters rushing to amplify it for the nightly news and morning papers. I have never read a business report in a newspaper that did not somewhere give the company a negative image. Union leaders have been running a continuous campaign against the company, though without much success as few workers in the private sector view union membership as beneficial. Since the unions have been unable to get the better of Wal-Mart by unionizing its workforce, they have increasingly turned to Democrat politicians to bring the company to heel. Recently there have been several moves by Democrat dominated State and City legislatures to target Wal-Mart with special legislation and to deny it the opportunity to open new stores.
Companies over time lose the inspiring and shrewd innovators who founded them, and consequently power passes to sons and daughters (often raised in comfort and given university indoctrination) and grandchildren. Also, accountants and other apparatchiks replace the uncompromising individualists who started from scratch. This happened at Ford Motor Company, which now, under Bill Ford and other family members, is donating and diverting large sums of company cash to homosexual causes at the same time as it sheds workers, cuts costs and loses money. It is hard to imagine Henry Ford, the founder, squandering company money on such an affluent and controversial minority and in the process alienating a large group of people who normally buy Ford’s cars and trucks. Ford is now in big financial trouble and things worsen by the day. Two things are interesting from our point of view. One is that Bill Ford is sticking to his financial commitment to controversial homosexual activism at a time when his company is on the ropes. The second is that in all the many daily reports on the Company’s troubles, there is never a mention of the protest campaign being conducted by the American Family Association and its effects on Ford sales. The only mention I have seen was the one by Alan Murray in the Wall Street Journal of July 26th 2006 (see our archive article dated July 31st) and this was intended to trivialize it. The Media Class would prefer that the public be kept in ignorance of the economic power that Christian groups can exert, so this is one time when a protest group tackling a major corporation gets the silent treatment. Bill Ford may have personal reasons for his enthusiasm for same-sex marriage and his willingness to divert his company’s shrinking funds. If so, we have not been enlightened by him or the media. The other explanation is that he calculates that aiding the homosexual agenda will gain media support for Ford at a bad time. It has to be said that most of the current business reporting has been very sympathetic to him and he has been congratulated for stepping aside as CEO.
According to the American Family Association website, Wal-Mart has now joined the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce. The AFA describes this organization as a leading promoter of same-sex marriage. Wal-Mart is also donating $25,000 and other sums to homosexual activist groups and giving special treatment to homosexual businesses via the awarding of contracts. Wal-Mart’s sudden enthusiasm for same-sex marriage advancement came as a surprise to this writer, though on reflection it makes sense, if one looks beyond the homosexual activist groups to the Media Class and its power.
Over the last few years I have read many articles in the media that celebrate the affluence of the homosexual “community”. Business commentators and economists have pointed out that homosexuals, not burdened by children, have money to burn on fun-filled vacations, fashionable clothes and leisure activities like night-clubbing. Many work in the service industries that are largely immune to economic cycles, such as women’s hairdressing, high-end fashion and catering. Clearly, the homosexual “community” is not the most financially needy in our society, so should be able to fund its own political and social activism. When big companies give to them, it must be interpreted as a gesture of support for the homosexual agenda. Since the number of homosexual people is small in relation to the overall population, one has to ask why businesses are willing to alienate larger groups over issues like same-sex marriage.
With regard to advertising in small homosexual publications, again one has to assume that this is also a gesture. After all, homosexuals also read the same newspapers and magazines as the rest of us and see all the general advertising we all see. Ford surely gains little in extra sales from advertising in “Gay” publications, but stands to lose many sales from the “redneck” and Christian auto-buyers. I doubt that Wal-Mart sees homosexuals as a significant sub-group of customers, either.
My belief is that Wal-Mart is looking beyond its homosexual customers, to the all-powerful Media Class. By signaling its support for same-sex marriage and the homosexual activist agenda, Wal-Mart is appealing to the Media Class, in which homosexuals are a major constituency. From now on, it will get a much more sympathetic media coverage and may find its battle with organized Labor gets little bad press. When it comes to power within the Media Class, the homosexual influence is much stronger than Labor. Like the Black “constituency”, Labor is a useful tool for the Media Class for delivering votes to Leftist politicians and providing storm-troops on the streets, but it is not at the heart of the Media Class.
Wal-Mart cannot afford to submit to unionization without losing its competitive edge, so it has concluded that it will get better media treatment if it supports the homosexual agenda. I am sure this calculation is correct and we can expect to see far less of the anti Wal-Mart reporting from now on. Antagonizing Christians is fast becoming the favorite sport of all who look to gain favor with the Media Class. We have always maintained on this website that the emotional, irrational Media campaign that has been waged against George Bush from the time of his first election, is simply because he announced that he was serious about his Christianity. Media people hate Christianity (and its practitioners) because it conflicts head-on with their own extreme narcissism and immorality. Only this week, the ignorant and dysfunctional former “comedienne” and lesbian celebrity Rosie O’Donnell was on ABC TV insisting that “Radical Christianity is just as threatening as radical Islam in a country like America where we have separation of Church and State.”
Such a statement, made on national television has to be the triumph of emotion over rationality. O’Donnell’s psyche must feel more threatened by the non-violent beliefs and morals of Christians living quietly around her than by the homicidal hate-filled Islamists who hope to destroy the USA and especially all the lesbians and homosexuals who now live well and freely in it.
Here on this website, we rest our case!