The age of the boycott

In these strange times, everything is a cultural litmus test.
           
I witnessed what I deemed “the epitome of 2018” on Friday night during a Waterloo Black Hawks game at Young Arena. The guy seated one row in front of me, who I’d pin at around the age of 50, spent the intermissions between periods—rather than heading up for another beverage and a hot dog, chucking a puck or admiring the fine Zamboni work being done on the ice—scrolling through his Facebook feed, locating every pro-or-anti-gun post he could find and replying with angry comments.
 
He may have even threatened to kill any jackbooted government thug who came to confiscate his AR-15, and if you’re wondering, yes, several of the memes made reference to Tide Pods and condom snorting. One in particular, however, caught my eye: “Liberals are boycotting Ted Nugent. Like and share if you’re brave enough to stand behind him.”
 
I, for one, am not boycotting Ted Nugent. I still listen to “Stranglehold” to get me through the occasional morning commute and consider the introductory riff one of the crunchiest ever recorded, but as we all know, the Motor City Madman has a tendency to make some, ahem, off the cuff comments every now and then. He’s no fan of Obama, snowflakes, or rabid coyotes, but it doesn’t change the way I feel about his guitar playing.
 
At least 98 percent of America, however, is boycotting something at this moment, with varying levels of success. Kellie informed me that she boycotted the Conrad pool in the summer of 2008, but she’s not sure that her still indecipherable goals were ever achieved. Marjory Stoneman Douglas shooting survivor David Hogg launched a take quake after Fox News host/Trump mouthpiece Laura Ingraham made fun of the fact that several colleges rejected him, and he responded in kind by listing her top advertisers and forcing every brand to take a political stand on everything.
 
Democratic congressional candidate Leann Jacobsen, who stopped in Grundy Center about a month ago, is calling for an advertising boycott of all Sinclair Media owned properties after “Last Week Tonight” host John Oliver created a video montage of hundreds of local news anchors reading conservative talking points handed down from management verbatim.
 
Sinclair’s holdings include three key Iowa markets, and full disclosure, a close friend from college works at one of their stations. He’s about as far from a right wing culture warrior as anyone I’ve ever met, but he’s now swept up in the controversy just the same. Most of the people actually affected in these situations are just normal folks trying to survive, and I know from experience what a journalist makes—none of the low level reporters and producers will be buying second homes anytime soon.
 
But as the sages from AC/DC once put it, “Money talks, and BS walks.” Private companies are free to advertise or not advertise with media outlets as they see fit, and the bottom line will determine the decisions that come from these boycotts. Someone is probably boycotting The Grundy Register at this exact moment because of something I’ve written, and that’s his or her right. Also, I’m sorry, and please come back and subscribe. I promise I’ll be nicer this time around.
 
It’s all getting exhausting, and boycotting a coffee shop, a local TV station, a Twitter/Fox News provocateur (though, to be fair, I no longer have cable, so I guess I too am boycotting Laura Ingraham) or a social network operated by a soulless robot human seems a bit futile. Mark Zuckerberg will still be a billionaire when he wakes up tomorrow, and the products that Johnson & Johnson and Bayer sell will still be stocked in the aisle at your local drugstore whether or not some bright-eyed mom is hawking them in between Ingraham’s rants about Benghazi and Hillary’s e-mails.
 
At some point, though, what little remains of our collective national sanity will dissolve in the next outrage cycle, and that’ll be a real shame. In the meantime, there’ll be plenty of available advertising space.