"FOX News' Bill O'Reilly and right-wing blogger Michelle Malkin complained that
jetBlue was a corporate sponsor of the YearlyKos blogger conference and had
offered a few free tickets for conference attendees (not exactly a huge
commitment, and something companies do for conferences of all political
stripes). O'Reilly and Malkin claimed that this was akin to jetBlue supporting
people who endorse murder and assassination - he quite literally compared the
top blogs to the KKK and the nazis.
jetBlue, mind you, advertises on FOX (according to Markos), shows FOX News on its flights, and its CEO has given $2100 to far-right GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney. But please just ignore all of that. Because jetBlue has now, finally, shown some attention to
the left as well, O'Reilly and Malkin decided that jetBlue must be destroyed."
I think people need to lay off JetBlue.
First of all you Mr. O'Reilly, do you think that all the sponsors of your show support your message? Do you think that they care about what you are talking about even. This is what the ad people see, a talking head on the screen blabbing about something, taking up time. Followed by ad space which they can use to reach an audience, they care about the number of you audience not who they are. The same thing I think it true of JetBlue, probably someone came to them and asked for a donation for a political conference. They thought that it couldn't hurt to get their name out there, get some good press maybe, if only with the people who attend the conference.
Now for you Mr. Kos, back off your attack dogs - hey you have the same breed of attack dog as Bill. JetBlue didn't drop the conference because they don't care about your ideas. They dropped it because the worst thing for any business right now is to get dragged into the middle of a political fight. If you take one side, all those on the other side start talking about doing business with someone else. JetBlue of all business runs on a small profit margin and cannot afford the loss of business for political reasons.
Who loses in this? We do, it was wrong of Bill to attack JetBlue for supporting a conference. Bill when did you stop believing in democracy, the mere fact that they supported the conference just means that they believed that supporting political dialogue was good. To live in a world where a company will only support the ideas it agrees with is a scary world indeed. I think the same goes to the Dialy Kos, it is shameful to suggest that JetBlue should not runs ads on Fox News, just because you don't like what they are saying. This reeks of the growing attempts on both sides to limit free speech. Free speech means that Bill O'Reilly has the right to have his show. Supporting Fox News with ads is just supporting the stations and the reports first amendment right.
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