Any long-time KOS reader is of course familiar by now with Clear Channel's wartime jingoistic orgy, from blacklists to CD burnings to France-bashing. Old news, right?
Try forwarding this on to your local France-hating wingnuts...
While some of Clear Channel's stations were beating the drum for a war in which thousands of people have died, with the France-bashing that was a necessary element of its war-boosting, Clear Channel itself is directly involved in $300 million of business each year in France...
The company has live entertainment venues throughout Europe, including France. Ironically, during the anti-France flap, it had recently won a 12-year, $35M advertising contract in France, where it has significant presence in open-air advertising. The company owns French subsidiaries that in turn do substantial business with French vendors, distributors and sponsors. Of necessity, Clear Channel--at the very time it was subsidizing, condoning, countenancing, and/or directly participating in the pro-war France-bashing--was hiring French employees, paying French taxes, and contributing to the French economy. Its Clear Channel France division (an entire corporate division) had even recently announced its selection of French company Cyberdeck to supply plasma kiosks, including an "Interactive Wine Waiter".
Boycott French wine at home, sell it abroad. Speaking of cheesy: In Houston, local talk hosts indulged the anti-French humor with some emphasis but without mentioning their corporate headquarters' own French operations.