I just posted the following message to Lowe’s via their customer service web page.
Because of your decision to pull ads from the Discovery Channel “All American Muslims” series, which thus means you support the insane bigotry and irrational hatred of an entire class of people, in total contradiction of the reality of the situation, I will not be purchasing from Lowe’s here in Bloomington anymore.
I will just drive a couple of miles down the road to Menards. It is really almost impossible to comprehend how you could make such a stupid decision, and fall prey to the irrational hatred and bigotry on the part of a vocal and vicious and hateful minority in this country.
I suppose next you will pulling your ads from any TV show that treats immigrants or any scary Brown people in America in any sympathetic light. I have always preferred Lowe’s as my first stop, in fact, I probably spent a thousand dollars there last year, because I bought some big ticket items including a high end charcoal grill, a new lawn mower, and a couple of truckloads of peat moss and gardening and lawn stuff, oh, and I forgot, stain to do my entire rear deck with the help of my son.
Not anymore. Not if this is your unAmerican way of treating other human beings.
Here is the back story for this decision, as reported in the Los Angeles Times. In a nutshell, the Discovery Channel had the audacity to run a TV series that followed the lives of ordinary people in Dearborn, Michigan, showing how they are living lives just like the rest of us, with work, family, the same aspirations and hardships. Problem is, they were not Christians. They were Muslims.
A California state senator called on home improvement chain Lowe’s to apologize for pulling advertising from a TV show featuring the lives of Muslim families.
Lowe’s pulled advertising from Discovery Channel/TLC’s “All-American Muslim” after the Florida Family Assn. complained about the show, which it called “propaganda that riskily hides the Islamic agenda’s clear and present danger to American liberties and traditional values.”
State Sen. Ted Lieu (D-Torrance) wrote a letter Saturday to Lowe’s Chief Executive Officer Robert A. Niblock in which he called the decision to pull advertising from the show “bigoted, shameful, and un-American” and “profoundly ignorant.” He demanded that the company rescind its action and apologize or face boycotts and legislative action.
“Lowe’s religious discrimination is the equivalent of a company asserting that it is pulling advertising from the Christian Broadcast Network’s 700 Club because the program somehow ‘riskily hides’ the agenda of Christian radicalized groups such as Aryan Nation,” Lieu wrote. “That assertion would, of course, be utter nonsense and religious bigotry.”
Lowe’s issued a statement in which it apologized for having “managed to make some people very unhappy” but did not say it would reinstate advertising on the show.
Lawmaker: Lowe’s ‘bigoted’ for pulling ‘All-American Muslim’ ads
Lowes pulled these ads in response to demands by a group down in Florida, the Florida Family Association. This group has made it their focus to threaten companies and advertisers with economic boycotts, if those threatened parties do not hue the line on what this so-called “Family Association” believes in. And what they believe in pretty much is bigotry, racism, homophobia, anti-abortion, anti-pornography, deregulation of the oil industry, opposition to labor unions, and a version of conservative Christianity that makes Sharia Law look like Unitarian Universalism.
They are totally intolerant of any but their own narrow version of religion, and viciously attack any and every public display of any other religion. They attacked Keith Ellison, the first Muslim elected to the United States Congress. Of course they totally ignore the part of the Constitution that plainly states there will be absolutely no religious test for holding office under the Constitution. Such facts are an inconvenience best ignored by these raving and narrow minded bigots. This group attacked the TV Show Pretty Little Liars because they somehow got it in their head that the young women in show were all lesbians.
The Florida Family Association seems to be modeled directly on the American Family Association, and says so on its web site.
The Southern Poverty Law Center listed that group as a hate group in their evaluation of such groups across America in 2010.
I refuse to link to their web sites. Just go ask The Google.
