Several prominent US businesses have withdrawn advertising from the television show All-American Muslims. They were pressured by right wing anti-Muslim groups who believe the show humanizes humans.
Well dang.
Here is Edward Said explaining the early days when there were only a few dozen so-called-experts who exploited the moral panic over Islam to earn money.
There’s a whole group of these people, numbering thirty or forty, who are trundled out whenever there’s a crisis, a hostage crisis, a hijacking, a massacre of some sort or another, to demonstrate the necessary connection between Islam, Arab culture and the Arab character, as it’s sometimes referred to, or the Islamic character and random violence. To my mind, the great misfortune is that these Orientalists whose role is to understand, to interpret the culture of Islam and the Arabs, and it’s a culture from which they earn their living, and in fact have no sympathy with it. They deal with it from an adversarial and oppositional position.
– Said & Barsamian The Pen and the Sword 1994 p.27-28
Thanks to Feministe we get a list of the cowardly businesses who bowed to pressure.
Anyway, the companies who pulled their ads include Lowe’s, Bank of America, the Campbell Soup Co., Dell, Estee Lauder, General Motors, Goodyear, Green Mountain Coffee, McDonalds, Sears, and Wal-Mart. So many don’t give your money to those companies this holiday season? Or call Lowe’s CEO Robert Niblock at (704) 758-2084 or Executive Support Mr. Andrew Kilby at (866) 900-4650 and let them know what you think about this decision (keep it respectful, please).
Life of refinement 