Verizon Rolls Over: Company Apologizes for Sponsoring Climate-Denier Rally

[babsbunny]

http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/rperks/verizon_rolls_over_company_apo.html

Rob Perks
Director, Center for Advocacy Campaigns, Washington, D.C.
Blog | About
Posted September 11, 2009 in Solving Global Warming

A few days late and a thousand dollars short. That's how I'd describe the belated victory over Verizon Wireless. I mean, I appreciate the sentiment, Lowell, but really, this embarrassing episode for your company easily could have been avoided.

OK, let me back up for a second. Recall that Verizon Wireless unintentionally (perhaps) and unnecessarily (for sure) got itself embroiled in a controversy that sparked a backlash from thousands of its customers. You see, several customers -- like me -- were quite shocked and, frankly, ticked off to learn that Verizon Wireless paid $1000 to sponsor the so-called Friends of America rally in West Virginia on Labor Day. This event, put on by Massey coal baron Don Blankenship, was a free concert featuring global warming deniers, right-wing pundits, and reckless-rhetoric-spewing rockers who gathered on the site of a mountantop mining site to promote an extreme anti-environmental political agenda.

[Cirque du So-What]

1. Why would a company like Verizon

get itself embroiled in such a controversy? Why would they align themselves with those who seek to continue destroying our environment? Is it cheaper electricity that compels them to underwrite this Astroturf? Or is it 'honor among thieves' that drives these foreskins in suits to reflexively support every right-wing cause that comes down the pike?

[Lasher]

2. Because Verizon's senior management made the decision.

And senior management is mostly Republicans.

[Cirque du So-What]

4. So I guess that makes it

the 'foreskins in suits' thingie then. Thanks!

[MH1]

3. I really have to kill my VZW account

and switch to CREDO, don't I?

It's just that the plan info CREDO sends out is sucky, or I'd probably have done it already.

[imdjh]

5. Verizon sponsors a lot of things- like PRIDE Orlando

http://www.mbaorlando.org/pages/come-out-with-pride.php

[Lasher]

6. Yes they do, and they are strong supporters of diversity in the workplace.

But this was distinctly a partisan political rally, mostly bankrolled with $1 million from that epitome of evil, Don Blankenship. They might just as well have contributed to a birther convention. And they didn't express any regrets until well after the event was over. Not very sincere IMO.