Pen-Elayne on the Web

Thank You For Hearing Them

Short entry again today; my head is all blogged up in both senses of the word, as I've been to the mountaintop through the blogroll but have also acquired a lovely code id by dose, making it hard to think straight. From future PA Senator Jim Capozzola (link at sidebar) comes the news that AT&T shareholders actually voted, at something like 97%, in favor of retaining language in the company's Equal Opportunity Statement that forbids discrimination or harrassment on the basis of sexual orientation. Some folks wanted to eliminate the language on the basis that "The sexual interest and activities of our employees are a private matter, not a corporate concern, Unless these interests and activities violate the law, they should remain private." Can we be more "don't ask, don't tell" about this? I mean geez, religion and marital status and age (all mentioned in the Statement) are private matters too, but nobody's whining about eliminating those words from corporate policy.

Anyway, AT&T seems to be a fairly cool company (as monoliths go) with a good anti-censorship history, but their currently-running "Talk Is Good" campaign still creeps me out. Says the news release, "Young & Rubicam... designed it to focus on what consumers find most important to talk about in their lives. Each ad is based on extensive, qualitative and quantitative research to reflect real local market data surrounding consumers' issues, concerns, thoughts and feelings present within communities today." Well, what that translates to in the one which "features music from contemporary artists who sing, 'Thank you for Hearing me'" is a number of hot-button words or phrases flashed on the screen followed by question marks, like "School Prayer?" "Global Warming?" So see, what gets to me is that these very real issues are literally reduced to meaningless, context-free sound-bytes without even hinting at the actual opinions they may represent. Maybe I'm frustrated because the first time I saw the ad I thought it was going to be brave and substantive and actually say something about The Issues. But it just lists them as, y'know, Stuff We Talk About. (And who are we thanking for hearing us on these issues anyway, since our government is certainly not listening?) And not all the important issues, naturally; you won't see "Corporate Power?" or "Media Monopoly?" in any of these, I assure you. So it's become one of those trivialize-and-marginalize-citizenship ads I just mute and look away as soon as it comes on. I don't envy Robin sometimes, I can be a real pip. Particularly when my temperature's over 100°. *sniffle*