Outside my hotel, on Times Square, there is a big billboard announcing that Converse® will be sponsoring a peace rally in Times Square on Thursday at noon. That’s all the information it gives.
A giant corporation, who you know is heavily hoping W wins the election so they can continue to have their taxes cut and their overseas factory conditions ignored, is sponsoring a protest against the president’s policies.
Why?
They obviously
- subscribe to the philosophy that “There’s no such thing as bad publicity.”
- don’t care that people will get out of hand, get arrested, spend time in jail and accrue legal debts and fines (which they won’t pay so it’s no skin off their corporate nose) as a consequence.
- don’t care that they will tie up all the traffic in a major metropolitan area, and cost the taxpayers a lot of money as a consequence of that and of the arrests and trials.
- couldn’t care less about pissing off their best friends in the government (federal, state, and city).
Converse® doesn’t care about freedom of speech as long as it is able to carry out any advertising campaign it wants to. A company that makes sneakers can’t possibly care one way or the other about the war in Iraq or Afghanistan, or the people who live in those countries, as long as they can eventually be persuaded to buy their Chucks™ as soon as they’ve got the basic survival necessities all settled.
Nope, Converse® has seen the light. People will be protesting in Times Square at noon on Thursday anyway, so take advantage of that fact to spread brand recognition. If the horse is galloping, might as well ride it.
Free Speech©. Brought to you today by Converse®. (“Because you can’t have free speech without corporate backing.”™)
white pebble 