- A flower company is the seventh advertiser to pull its ads from conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh’s radio program in reaction to his derogatory comments about a law student who testified about birth control policy.
- ProFlowers said Sunday on its Facebook page that it has suspended advertising on Limbaugh’s program because his comments about Georgetown University student Sandra Fluke “went beyond political discourse to a personal attack and do not reflect our values as a company. ”
- The six other advertisers that say they have pulled ads from his show are mortgage lender Quicken Loans, mattress retailers Sleep Train and Sleep Number, software maker Citrix Systems Inc., online data backup service provider Carbonite and online legal document services company LegalZoom.
- ProFlowers had said on Twitter that posts it received about Limbaugh’s remarks affected its advertising strategy. ProFlowers is an online flower delivery service.
(Read the entire article here.)
Interestingly, just moments before I came upon that article, I found this in my e-mail, from ProFlowers Customer Care, in response, I assume, to one of the petitions I had signed in the previous couple of days:
- Thank you for your feedback. We spend our advertising dollars across a wide spectrum of media channels. The views and opinions of the media outlets and personalities we advertise with are not necessarily those of our company.
- We simply wish to delight our customers with fresh and unique gifting products, and that will continue to happen to the best of our abilities.
- Best Regards,
- Yolanda D.
It’s interesting to note that ProFlowers’ e-mail, which apparently was sent late last night (Saturday, March 3), has all of the familiar signs of a kiss-off: Oh, we advertise all over the place and don’t really pay any attention to any of it. We don’t know or care what’s being said in the media we support with our advertising dollars. We just like flowers!
Sometime between last night and this afternoon, it seems, someone at ProFlowers woke up to the fact that it really does matter where they advertise, it really does matter when they spend money to support odious, hate-filled rhetoric, it really true that we’re known by the company we keep. (Mom was right.)
Points for wising up, albeit late. Kudos to those advertisers who pulled their dollars away early on, though, rather than waiting till they got both eyes blackened.
It would be nice to think that Limbaugh has at last come to his Lonesome Rhodes moment, though I am too much the pessimist to really believe it. But perhaps some people, like ProFlowers, will now belatedly come to see what a truly hateful and hate-filled little man he is.
