I was going to do this simply as a response in the previous thread, but I’ve seen it enough times that I’m responding to it separately here, in re boycotts:
As far as I’m concerned, it still comes down to a person’s right on where they spend their money. Nothing more, nothing less.
Gordon Bennett, no, it doesn’t. Why in the WORLD do people keep bringing it around to people’s “rights?” Show me one posting, in the history of this board–in the history of my giving public opinions–where I have *ever* said people didn’t have the “right” to spend their money elsewhere?
It’s a sidetrack, people. It’s a dodge, a shuck and jive. “Peter, you’re saying we don’t have the right to–” NO, I AM NOT SAYING THAT. For that matter, I don’t find anyone else offhand who has said that. So if anyone else wants to respond with “people have the right to boycott,” save it. It’s a NON-ISSUE, and I am sick of it. It seems self-evident to me, but I will now spell it out for the folks in the cheap seats: When I say something is “wrong,” that does not automatically equate with saying that people don’t have the “right to do it.” And if you don’t believe me, then next time you go to a job interview, fart loudly and repeatedly, and if the interviewer makes a face, point out you have the right to fart. And enjoy unemployment.
It’s the same muddy-headed thinking that declares if one is against going to war, one is in favor of bloody dictators. Or the time that I pointed out to John Byrne that his changing a private security guard to a police officer in his Spidey reboot was wrongheaded because a NYC police officer would never shout to a private citizen that he should have tackled an armed robber…whereupon John responded that I was supporting the idea of people standing aside and doing nothing while a NYC police officer was beaten to death. If that makes no sense to you, then you begin to comprehend just how bewildered I am every time I see another “but people have the right to boycott” wheeze.
I’m talking about pure, simple, appropriate, proportional response: If you disagree with someone, say it with words, because saying it with punitive, retaliatory measures proves nothing except that you are petty and intolerant.
Furthermore, boycotts are unimaginative. They got no style. If you’re going to do a boycott, do it with some flair. For instance: All those people who sit there contentedly and say, “I’m boycotting Dominos Pizza because the owner gives money to Project Rescue,” all right. Fine. Just for laughs: I wonder how many people then say, “And I’m taking all the money I would have spent on Dominos and making contributions to Planned Parenthood in the name of the Dominos Pizza owner.” Now wouldn’t that be a kick. Planned Parenthood getting thousands of dollars a week in unspent pizza money, all in the name of that guy. Doesn’t make boycotts right. But it makes it less wrong.
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