So here comes the Times with its front-page piece, on how Chick-fil-A's a corporate freak, or something. See, "Chick-fil-A Official Has Little Company in the Corporate World."
And here's the online version at latimes.com, "Many businesses seek favor among LGBT customers":
Chick-fil-APresident Dan Cathy's public opposition to gay marriage has landed him in a lonely corner of corporate America.The Times, to its credit, had good coverage yesterday of the left's vandalism of the Torrance Chick-fil-A location. But as noted, its coverage of the Wednesday buycott was relegated to the business section, not the front-page.
While the fast-food chicken chain has inflamed gay organizations and their supporters nationwide, many companies are going out of their way to court those groups.
J.C. Penneythis year hired lesbian talk show host Ellen DeGeneres as its spokeswoman and featured same-sex couples in its catalogs. Kraft Foods recently posted a photo of a rainbow-hued Oreo cookie to its Facebook page.
Bank of America and nearly 40 other companies now offer tax relief to gay employees — triple the number of firms with the same option last year. In Washington state, Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos and his wife last month donated $2.5 million to back a gay marriage ballot initiative already endorsed by Microsoft, Starbucks and Nike.
Business donations to Los Angeles gay pride events, including a festival and a short parade, have doubled in five years to $300,000 last year, when Bud Light, Johnson & Johnson andCoca-Colawere sponsors.
It's not hard to see why. Estimates peg the self-identified lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender demographic at about 3.8% of the American population — or roughly 9 million people. Their buying power is expected to reach $790 billion this year, according to Witeck Communications, a marketing firm specializing in LGBT issues.
They're not shy about spending, dropping more than $60 a week each on restaurants, according to a 2010 report from Community Marketing Inc. More than a quarter of gays and lesbians bought a high-definition TV that year.
Nationwide, more Americans now support same-sex marriage than oppose it, according to recent surveys from the Pew Research Center. Backing is particularly strong among young people, a demographic that advertisers are keen to reach. LGBT characters are gaining prominence in popular entertainment, with more major roles in music, television, movies and even comic books.
As customers shift with the cultural tide, many formerly conservative companies are doing the same.
"Corporate America is definitely following the trends, reading the tea leaves," said Jason Snyder, an assistant professor at UCLA Anderson School of Management. "It's more symbolic of what's happening in society — that supporting gay marriage is becoming a less risky or taboo position."
Gay consumers also tend to react faster and more forcefully to slights. They pay attention to which companies promote diversity and lend support to same-sex causes — factors that heavily influence where their dollars go, according to the Community Marketing report.
And the LGBT population is often highly organized in using Twitter and Facebook to pull together mass petitions and boycotts within hours. More than 14,000 people signed up on Facebook for National Same Sex Kiss Day atChick-fil-Aon Friday, an event arranged mostly online.
And so look at this today: A total of 14,000 people organized on Facebook "within hours"? Well, blow me down! And how many people turned out around the country on Wednesday to support Chick-fil-A's corporate practices? The company won't release exact details, although it did say that the sales were "unprecedented." That is news. That is front-page news. We'll see how it goes at some of the rest of the national media today. Here's Thursday's report at the Weekly Standard, "Mainstream Media Blacks Out Chick-fil-A Story?" And at AoSHQ, "Media Blacked Out Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day":
Okay, in the post below, I was going to claim the media blacked it out, but I didn't know if that was true; for one thing, I don't watch the media, so I had no idea. For another, I saw a stray mention in a comment or on Twitter that it was being covered on some local broadcast. So I thought maybe they were covering it.More later.
Nope. The major papers embargoed the actual news.
I'll choke on my chicken if a photo of homosexuals kissing makes the front-page a major metropolitan daily.
P.S. Not mentioned by the Times is how gay marriage referendums have failed each and every time they've been placed before the voters at the state level --- 32 times by the latest counts. Kudos to Jeff Bezos for putting his corporate money where his mouth is. We'll see if he's on the right side of history when Washington state voters head to the polls in November.
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