Congress Starting Its Own Ad Agency? Lowes is Apparently its First Client

Today’s latest “Progressive Hypocrisy of the Day” feature is the letter signed by members of Congress, demanding that Lowes reinstate its advertising dollars for the TLC show “All American Muslim”, despite the fact that ratings had tanked and other advertisers had pulled out as well.  I had always thought that private businesses were in charge of their own advertising budgets, but apparently some of our representatives now see themselves a some kind of governmental ad agency.

Personally, I don’t have a big problem with private citizens choosing to boycott a show they don’t agree with or boycotting an advertiser they don’t agree with. However, in this case, we are talking about government representatives with the power to have an effect on private business through “favors” and legislation. Seems like it might be a bit intimidating or even threatening coming from a source with that kind of power over your future business endeavors. In fact, I would say this sounds more than a little intimidating:

Calling the Lowe’s decision “un-American” and “naked religious bigotry,” Sen. Ted Lieu, D-Torrance, told The Associated Press he would also consider legislative action if Lowe’s doesn’t apologize to Muslims and reinstate its ads. The senator sent a letter outlining his complaints to Lowe’s Chief Executive Officer Robert A. Niblock.

At the same time, I didn’t see these representatives having any problem with multiple boycotts asking for advertisers to drop sponsorship of shows like “Sarah Palin’s Alaska” or “Glenn Beck”. In fact, I wrote about the usual suspects behind the Palin show boycott back in Nov. 2010:

Leading the charge to shut down the Palin series has been Michael Kieschnick, who has his hands in just about everything, working with George Soros, Jim Wallis, Andy Stern, Drummond Pike and many more.

It’s evident that a company may drop a conservative oriented show at any time, as long as they are aware that any progressive or politically correct shows must continue to be supported, no questions asked, with their private ad dollars. If this is how our elected representatives are running their new ad agency, I think I’d rather give the account back to Darrin from Bewitched. At least he and Larry were actually trying to help their clients make some money.