Posted by panch from adsl-64-168-27-44.dsl.snfc21.pacbell.net (64.168.27.44) on Friday, April 19, 2002 at 9:10AM :
Proctor and Gamble is a very large company that makes products for every nook and cranny on you. Several years ago they were hit by one of the weirdest boycotts ever. It seems some people down south thought one of their logos was the mark of Satan. Word spread and in not much time there was an informal boycott of their products. Sales dropped alarmingly. Groups were formed to pray for the company...people begged Proctor and Gamble to break its ties to Satan, to get back their corporate soul (some debate about that)...hoping to gently nudge the company back to profitability by hurting its bottom line. A certain amount of logic there, given the kinds of whackos who believe this stuff...Christianity I mean...and poetic justice too, most corporations ARE in league with old Beelzebub. The Buck Knife Corporation tells you right up front that Jesus Christ sits on the their Board, at least they used to, written right there on the promotional literature you got with your Buck. So...why NOT Satan too?
Anyway their lawyers were going nuts. They put out full page adds...they must have felt stoopid...they did TV spots...they got their PR flacks to work Congress...they finally sued some of the groups who were spreading these rumors, alleging that they were losing millions and millions because of the gossip and nonsense put out by these nuts.
They lost, of course. People are perfectly free to think any corporation is in league with the Devil...well? With all their might and muscle there was nothing a judge could do. Hell they could have put the company out of business entirely...as any number of companies shut down and throw their workers out on their ears whenever they feel like it. The people who believed this stuff, crazy as they may have been, are protected under the First Amendment. If they believe it, they are free to say it...screw Proctor and Gamble. It's protections like these John Ashcroft and the Boys would love to get rid of. Because if they could, then we could be sued for saying anything about a cigarette maker if it hurt his business...or any other company that would seek to shut up any detractors or any comments about their products on the grounds that their business was losing money as a result...or A Jackster somewhere in their company was "losing sleep".
We are all used to it, don't even know, wouldn't recognize it if we read parts of it...but the US Constitution is a far more precious document than any Ten or forty Commandments...much more precious.
Don't screw, don't steal, don't talk badly about Yahweh, don't this, don't that. Goddam celestial nag! Who listens anyway? Who isn't screwing and killing and stealing? The Ten Don'ts, have no enforcement arm, not anymore. They did have during the Dark Ages, that happy time Bush and Ashcroft and Falwell would like to take us back to. The Constitution does have an enforcement mechanism and that is what our own Fundamentalists are aiming at pulling down. Why should we able to take polluting companies to court but they can't get at fornicators and those who commit whoredoms...or are unclean in the eyes of the Lord?
Anyway, that covers Proctor and Gamble, the Devil, and leaves us with Jackie Bejan. If I begin to have dreams about Jackie, Jackie and a certain Chihuahua down the street let's say, a particularly well hung dog...or a cat or mouse, and I decide to write about those disgusting visions...ain't a damn thing she can do about it. My dreams are protected by the Constitution...the reputation of her privates aren't.
If I wrote e mails to her customers and told them how very often Jackie would come to my door desperate to have sex in order to feed her family...and I was obliged to put something in a brown paper wrapper for her to use...there still wouldn't be anything she could do about it...or could she?
If I told Chemical Safety Technology customers that Jackie was a liar and a cheat and that I was done with her fornications and whoredoms...and it cost her company business, she might have a claim...especially if I were lying, and could be proven to be lying...and even more so if I had made statements to people that my pockets were deeper and knew my soul blacker, my heart harder...and even more if I could be shown to have brought two silly and frivolous suits against her, just to prove that I indeed had been out to "get" her all along. Maybe.
But I can dream here, and speculate and wonder and write all I want to...and as the readership grows, and we get even more people from Japan to Russia to Europe and Asia and America reading, her fame will spread as she does. Nothing she can do about it.
Her only hope is my own sense of decency. The same thing I was counting on her to display when I said "no"...never dreaming for a minute that she would use that rejection as an excuse to hurt me, my business and family the way she went and did...pell mell as if her own feelings are the only things that matter anywhere...because her feelings are backed by American Express and mine aren't...because she has the deep pockets and shallow psyche to hurt people with, even innocent children who never did her any harm..
Now jackie knows why there is a Constitution...why rich people count no more in front of it than poor artists do. She learned the hard way, but it wont be the first lesson she's gonna learn that way.
The "Jackie Bejan Memorial Bitch Doll" will soon be appearing on shelves of Porno stores and in catalogues everywhere. The Poster Girl of "Freedom of Stench" and "Just Desserts"...cast in that soft rubber they make dildos out of....dyed a sensuous Pepto Bismal pink...every feature faithfully reproduced, and I am a master at reproduction...with aluminum wires inside the limbs so you can bend and twist her to your wildest wishes...knees that bend, backs that sway...titties that respond to your every desire...YUK!
Maybe I'll send a complimentary one to the presidents of the companies she does business with...at Christmastime.
Thank god for the Constitution...it levels the playing field and sends those who feel they are immune from the Law, as free as they are from common decency, reeling and rocking and suing frivolously.
Your check to Coyote will help out another worthy cause.
-- panch
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