Corporate America is starting to freak out over the very thought of being associated with the mutant mayhem that’s going to to explode in Cleveland when the Republican National Convention kicks into gear.
According to the New York Times, Apple, Google, Walmart and Coca-Cola, among others, have suddenly realized it may not be good for business to be seen sponsoring the guy who wants to forcibly round up and deport brown people and “punish” women for seeking abortions, or the guy who wants to send his armed patrols into “Muslim neighborhoods,” or any of the other bright lights in the Republican Party whose entire platform is built on a foundation of bigotry, misogyny and gun-toting hatred. They’ve belatedly concluded that yes, that groovy iPhone 7 with no real interesting new features can easily and quickly be replaced with the Samsung Edge; Kohl’s and Target sell cheap Chinese-made clothing just like WalMart; and people are really just as happy drinking Pepsi as Coke, if they associate those other products with a commercial or banner they saw in a Quicken Loans arena filled with folks frothing at the mouth and hooting with delight over every veiled and not-so-veiled jab at women, African-Americans and Hispanics:
The pressure is emerging as some businesses and trade groups are already privately debating whether to scale back their participation, according to interviews with more than a dozen lobbyists, consultants and fund-raisers directly involved in the conversations.
It kinda sucks either way for corporate America. After all, bigoted Republicans also drink Coca-Cola and play all day on their Apple toys. But it sure doesn’t mesh with those hip, cool, progressive and multicultural folks we see using their products in TV and Web ads. All in all, this year in particular, the prospect of having anything at all to do with the Republican Party is enough to send shivers down a highly compensated corporate officer’s spine:
Kent Landers, a Coca-Cola spokesman, declined to explain the reduction in support. But officials at the company are trying to quietly defuse a campaign organized by the civil rights advocacy group Color of Change, which says it has collected more than 100,000 signatures on a petition demanding that Coca-Cola, Google, Xerox and other companies decline to sponsor the convention. Donating to the event, the petition states, is akin to endorsing Mr. Trump’s “hateful and racist rhetoric.’’
“These companies have a choice right now, a history-making choice,” said Rashad Robinson, the executive director of Color of Change. “Once they start writing checks, they are essentially making a commitment to support the platform of somebody who has threatened riots at the convention. Do they want riots brought to us by Coca-Cola?”
Color of Change has teamed up with Women’s and Hispanic organizations, fairly warning companies like Google, Cisco and AT&T that their brands will be tainted by association with the likes of Trump and Cruz. As the Times article notes, Color of Change was instrumental in forcing McDonald's, Coke and Pepsi to leave the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) after that Republican front organization was tied to the introduction of racially-charged “Stand Your Ground" laws.
Of course this hasn’t stopped them before. Many of these same corporations gladly peddled their largesse for Bush and Romney's efforts with nary an eyebrow raised. But something this time around seems decidedly different, even as a wide variety of corporate sponsors have “pledged” some $54 million to the cause:
[A] senior Republican official with direct knowledge of convention fund-raising said there was growing worry inside the party about whether donors would follow through with their pledges if Mr. Trump became the nominee.
When there’s a riot going on, or even a bunch of spoiled white men calling for an armed insurrection to take us back to the time when men were men, women were subservient, and African-Americans and Hispanics were just “coloreds,” you really want to keep your corporate logo from burning into Americans’ memory cells. One thing they can be fairly sure of, though: in this era of hyperdriven social media, someone, somewhere will be taking names.