- Since when is logrolling for liberals a corporate duty?
We’ll go out on a limb here.
There is no big U.S. company we admire more than the John Deere Corp. It is truly an American icon. Their CEO is Sam Allen, who, from all I’ve learned of him, he is an honorable man and a supremely effective business leader.
And the Ccompany is a valuable and admirable corporate citizen of the Quad Cities.
As far as we know, Deere has no connection to the Stephen Colbert show nor any affiliation with any of the show’s sponsors.
We do not hold the company responsible for anything Mr. Colbert says or does.
We only wish to use the Colbert controversy to illustrate an interesting characteristic of today’s American corporate culture through the behavior pattern of this one iconic company within our readers’ midst.
We recall rather vividly the great controversy a few years ago over Rush Limbaugh’s characterization of one Sandra Fluke (pronounced Fluck). For those who might remember Ms. Fluke was the Georgetown University law school student trotted out by the Democratic congressional caucus as the model of young women so sorely put upon by the failure of taxpayers to foot the bill for their contraception meds and devices.
She claimed that her fellow law school coeds at Georgetown were hard pressed, as struggling college students, to pay for their contraception needs…totalling, Ms Fluke claimed, to be as much as $3500 per year. She was pleading on their behalf for taxpayer relief, mainly through health insurance legislation…such as that pending as Obamacare.
Rush Limbaugh, on his show, had the temerity to make some jest toward Ms. Fluke and even referred to her, somewhat obliquely, by the unfortunately and poorly chosen term, “slut”, given her apparently enormous sexual appetite and annual contraception bills.
A firestorm ensued.
Limbaugh show advertisers were called upon by throngs of concerned citizens to censure Mr. Limbaugh, to abandon the show and to immediately withdraw their sponsorship.
The John Deere Corporation responded. Their spokesperson hurried to a microphone in rather unseemly haste to announce that his company was not a sponsor of the despicable Limbaugh show, but, if it had been, it would end its association.
And further, if we recall correctly, Deere was among the first companies to withdraw from the business association whose charter is to encourage legislation favorable to business, known as ALEC, because of its rather vague association with “Stand your ground” legislation as it related to the Trayvon Martin case…THE cause celebre’ of that moment.
Deere has, by these actions, established itself as a company keenly sensitive to issues which arouse the ire of liberal groups.
No such sensitivity seems to be evident when it comes to “non-social justice” matters.
So far, no word on the official John Deere position on Stephen Colbert’s incredibly nasty disrespect for the office of the President of the United States.
Don’t misunderstand. No reaction should be expected or deemed necessary had not the company responded so promptly, decisively, and enthusiastically in the past to the aforementioned “transgressions” by renowned public figures and “liberal causes”.
Vertiaspac.com
