25 Dumbest Comments On Lowe’s Facebook Page About “All-American Muslim”
“All-American Muslim” is a new series on TLC (The Learning Channel) that follows five Muslim families living in Dearborn, Michigan.
Lowe’s pulled all of their advertising from the show because a Christian Evangelical group was angry about the network’s positive portrayal of Muslim culture.
Classy
Why are we censoring these people’s names? They posted publicly on a corporate facebook page under their own names and therefore obviously wanted their views to be attributable - I say let’s let them.
This makes me really sad. I mean, obviously it’s sad that there are people who think Muslims are bad people, or who are openly prejudiced and hostile toward anyone who is different. I don’t really care where Lowe’s advertises, but I immediately care if Lowe’s UNadvertises for such a terrible reason.
But then there’s also the response, which seems to be “look at all these dumb people who hate Muslims and now love Lowe’s.” Which is 1) easy 2) unproductive, 3) kind of the same hateful attitude in return?
Vocal minorities are generally only good at being vocal, not becoming larger. So here’s a very vocal minority of people putting up offensive comments while there are vastly more who completely disagree with those comments entirely.
It’s a bit ridiculous any of this is hotly contested in the first place. We’re talking about a national hardware chain pulling ads from a TLC television show, which isn’t exactly the cultural zeitgeist. Lowe’s has every right to pull their ads from wherever, and then claim the consumer response from that action, whether positive or negative.
While a show about American Muslim families might be found offensive by some subset of subhumans in Florida, there’s also the flip side of the fact that TLC is making a show about American Muslims in the first place (E.g. “Look at these creatures. Isn’t it weird to think Muslims exist IN AMERICA? And they also go to Taco Bell or the Gap? My horizons are broadened!”), which leaves me with feeling like I shouldn’t even bother being upset with Lowe’s itself.
But if you strip all of that away, we’re left with the fact that Lowe’s pulled its ads because a group in Florida protested that the show was “propaganda that riskily hides the Islamic agenda’s clear and present danger to American liberties and traditional values,” which is insane both in the obvious respect and also as if every TV show was not already propaganda of some kind (TLC’s being, hey, check out these people you think are weird and become obsessed with them. It has, after all, been quite successful.)
Anyway, to get to my point, instead of a list of the 25 dumbest comments on a facebook page, why not a campaign to get Home Depot to advertise on the show? I mean, at this point the whole thing is too hot for a corporate entity to touch, but if anything, at least Lowe’s could be shown how ignorant their decision was and also it would be a win for Home Depot and the show itself. It’s not that I necessarily like Home Depot or want to push a big box store over your local hardware store, but we’re talking about national advertisers so our options are pretty limited.
So anyway, Home Depot can be contacted at their contact page, or their Facebook page, or their twitter account @homedepot. Tell them to support real American values, to support respectful understanding of different cultures and encourage diversity and tolerance. Tell them whatever you want, if you want. Might as well, right?
We’ve been talking lately about how incredibly important it is to be constructive and I thought this was a small and perfect example. Sure, I’m tempted to say Lowe’s is a bunch of reactionary cowards for pulling their advertising, but that’s not really the point. The point is, what do I want to do about it as a result (other than add to the cacophony of bitching about a company I don’t patronize and how it affects a show I’ve never seen). A huge part of the reason I stopped working in politics was the obsessive focus on the zero sum game. It wasn’t about building anything - it became so much about how we could tear down what anyone else was attempting to build and perhaps even hobble them in the process.
These days, I am working to pay less attention to our collective anger and more to what productivity or inspiration that energy could fuel. I know a lot of things are a mess…. but that doesn’t make the world full of bad people and it sure as hell doesn’t abdicate us from our personal responsibility to climb in the mire and help sort it all out.
No one’s going to do this for us, you know?
“These days, I am working to pay less attention to our collective anger and more to what productivity or inspiration that energy could fuel. I know a lot of things are a mess…. but that doesn’t make the world full of bad people and it sure as hell doesn’t abdicate us from our personal responsibility to climb in the mire and help sort it all out.”
Let this be the new ethos of this decade.
