Matching Wildmon’s Boycott With a ‘Buycott’

In reading Steve Weinstein’s encouraging report (“Religious Right May Be In for a Fight,” Calendar, May 20) on the well-intentioned letter-writing campaigns being organized to beat back the Rev. Donald Wildmon’s effort to re-impose the ideological terrorism of the ‘50s, it occurred to me that well-intentioned isn’t good enough.

The inquisition of 40 years back began with a few isolated wackos who cast a shadow of fear over the ledger books of American commerce. They have to be confronted with something stronger than letters. Letters can be counted or they can be discounted.

No, the Wildmons of the world--and they proliferate as soon as one demonstrates he can get headlines and effect--must be fought in kind. I suggest the letter campaign be augmented with something bolder, something that registers in the cash register exactly as Wildmon proposes to do.

I would invite these very important guardian organizations of First Amendment liberties to consider fighting fire with fire . . . or, more specifically, fire with buyer. I’m suggesting combating boycott with “buycott.”

I have a great deal of admiration for Arthur Kropp and People for the American Way as well as the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation. And I harbor strong hopes for Freedom of Expression Network. Their decision to finally fight back and write back against the religious right’s attempts at censorship is a good and necessary one. But I think they need to get into the arena in order to be in the contest. Ergo, the “buycott” strategy.

What is a “buycott”? It’s the effort of those who believe in the First Amendment to buy one item of a company’s product in response to the imposition of a boycott. Obviously, this has its limitations. It works better for Campbell’s Soup than for Mercedes-Benz. But, in most cases, a little concerted effort to reward courage with purchase can put a hump rather than a dump in a company’s sales charts. I choose to believe that there are more Americans who cherish their freedoms than there are those who fear them.

Let’s get into the marketing game. Placing ads in major newspapers denouncing Wildmon and writing letters of appreciation to companies buying time on controversial programs are good ideas and will probably have some effect. But they run the risk of lending more credibility to Wildmon and company than they deserve. So, instead or in addition to, when a company is threatened with a Wildmonic boycott, let’s get behind it at the check-out counter, let it know we’ll make up for any sales it may lose to Wildmon.

Let’s give support by starting a national “buycott” of the products of those companies which have the sense of leadership and courage to sponsor shows that teach the power and value of diversity, that provoke in the American consciousness the kind of serious consideration of controversial subject matter that is healthy in a democracy--or even those who want to sponsor “filth” if you or I happen to want to watch that.

Wildmon understands one thing really well--the commercial marketplace. Call it consumerism or the bottom line, he really does have his finger on the pulse of corporate consciousness. He understands and exploits the fear factor of commerce. Where he falters and fails to pass the grade as an American is in that other market, the marketplace of ideas.

From around the globe, people hear and dream about this country’s freedoms of thought and speech. Immigrants, legal and not so, pour to our shores and across our borders for the opportunities offered by this free market of ideas (as well as goods). They have read us in clandestine publications, heard us on short wave and Voice of America, viewed us through smuggled film and videotapes and glimpsed us by satellite, often risking their lives to do so.

They, and most of us, understand the importance and value of this access to ideas and images that may not be acceptable to this or that faction, party or government. Someone once said that the power of choices nourishes the roots of democracy.

Now, Wildmon doesn’t seem to trust his fellow citizens to turn off the box or change channels if they find the program objectionable. What does this sound like? I’ll leave it to you. So Wildmon has a notion to show those people at Pfizer and S.C. Johnson & Sons just how much he does know about the market by calling a boycott. Unfortunately, he may not be all wrong in this strategy--infect sales projections with the virus of fear. A few of these corporate outfits have been less than courageous in the past when faced with this tactic, which is what leads me to think that the “buycott” is the more effective way to counter this nonsense.

Yes, certainly, let’s write letters of thanks, let’s take out ads against narrow-mindedness and bigotry, but let’s also demonstrate where the marketplace of goods and the marketplace of ideas converge by buying the products of those sponsors. Perhaps we’ll all be pleasantly surprised. We can show the Wildmons of the world that our rights truly are inalienable.