October 5, 2011
Column #1,571
Good Guys Defeat Playboy
By
Mike McManus
There is hope.
Morality in Media
, an anti-porn group that not one person in 100 ever heard of –
has taken down “The Playboy Club,” an NBC prime time show after
only three episodes.
While the show did
not feature nudity, “Playboy took pornography mainstream and
has hard core pornography on cable,” said Pat Trueman,
President of Morality in Media (MIM), and former chief of the
Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section of the Justice
Department.”Playboy is one of the largest distributors of hard
core pornography.”
The victory is
sweet.
How did it happen?
MIM created a website, “www.ClosetheClubOn NBC.com which listed
the advertisers sponsoring the show, and urged people to email
such people as Jeff Immelt, chairman of GE and the CEO of
Chrysler and Fiat, urging them to pull ads off the show.
Other
advertisers? Would you believe Campbell’s Soup invested in Hugh
Hefner’s latest venture – and Jello/Kraft, Allstate Insurance,
Subway, UPS Store and Hellman’s Mayo?
These are
companies who cultivate their pro-family image.
How could they
have stooped so low?
Perhaps they
thought The Playboy Club would attract lots of viewers in the
cherished 18-49 demographic group, which might help them sell
more cars, soup and Jello.
Big mistake. What
they harvested was outrage that these wholesome companies would
be featured on a series that glorified the sexual exploitation
of women and the Playboy philosophy that women are to be used,
abused and then discarded.
MIM generated
20,000 letters which clearly embarrassed those advertisers. It
enlisted other allies such as the Parent’s Television Council
and even Gloria Steinem who sparked more emails to advertisers.
MIM even drafted a
letter that could be sent with a click to the advertisers:
“Dear (recipient’s
name),
“I am writing to
urge you to STOP advertising on “The Playboy Club.” The show,
like Playboy Magazine itself, is using sexual exploitation of
women for profit. Your company should be ashamed to promote the
Playboy brand. Pornography is causing devastating harm to
families in America and I urge you to have no association with
it.
“Please reconsider
your advertising strategy and tell Comcast/NBC that “The Playboy
Club” is not an appropriate place for your advertising dollars.”
Some advertisers
disappeared after a week and others after two episodes.
Perhaps most
surprising, the show’s ratings were never good.
The combination of
poor ratings and viewer outrage torpedoed the show in only three
weeks – the first new network show to be cancelled this season.
Even Hugh Hefner
had to confess, “It should have been on cable, aimed at a more
adult audience.”
This technique of
going after the advertisers was pioneered by Don Wildmon of the
American Family Association (AFA). .He used the technique in
2008 to fight McDonald’s support of the homosexual agenda by
being listed as a member of the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber
of Commerce (NGLCC), to which it donated $20,000. When
McDonald’s ignored Wildmon’s letter to remove its sponsorship of
NGLCC, Wildmon announced a boycott of McDonalds, and urged its
500,000 members to tell the manager of their local chain that
they would not patronize the restaurant until McDonald’s changed
its policies.
“The only value
corporate America knows is the bottom line,” Wildmon wrote in
his book, “Speechless: Silencing the Christians.”
Just three months
later, he wrote to AFA supporters: “Great news! Because of AFA
supporters like you, McDonald’s had told AFA it will remain
neutral in the cultural war regarding homosexual marriage. AFA
is ending the boycott…”
Victories like
these are rare, but possible when there are leaders like Don
Wildmon and Pat Trueman who create organizations of Christians
willing to battle the worst excesses of the culture.
In announcing the cancellation
of “The Playboy Channel,” Trueman took aim at his next target:
“We’ll use the same public pressure that closed the club to get
the attention of the U.S. Justice Department which has not
prosecuted one case against pornographers during the current
administration.”
As the man who once led the
Justice’s prosecution of pornographers for the Reagan and Bush I
Administrations, Trueman knows - this will be a tough battle.
Clinton began the shutdown of obscenity prosecution which
continued under conservative George W. Bush.
There’s no hope Obama will
begin enforcing the law – unless parents become outraged enough
to join the cause. Go to
www.moralityinmedia.org.
You can make a difference!
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