Tuesday, October 25, 2005

American Girl feels heat of protest

Family advocates believe anti-abortion campaign working
(A lot of groups have been upset about this, and it really made the rounds of the blogosphere recently. You can see my first post on this topic to get the background.)

After launching a protest campaign, pro-family groups claim the maker of the popular American Girl dolls has begun to de-emphasize its partnership with a group that supports abortion and lesbianism.
(Read the whole thing here.)

This is good news, but I can’t help wondering if it really means very much. The Episcopal Church (USA) raised a fair storm of protest when it posted a carbon copy of a Druid “eucharist for women” on its Women's Ministries website, complete with the offering of raisin cakes to the “queen of heaven.” (No, they didn’t mean Mary! Check out Jeremiah 7:18.) When people got upset, they simply removed the links and provided a really lame excuse for the posting. They never changed their attitude. All large corporations tend to act the same way.

And it has apparently been going on for a long while, according to Snopes.com . Back in 1889, a Mr. Phineas P. Jenkins, a salesman of pig-iron products, spent a night in a Pullman car in the company of far too many bedbugs. Jenkins penned a note of complaint to George M. Pullman, President of the Pullman Palace Car Company. In return, Jenkins received a wonderfully detailed and heartfelt apology from Pullman. Its effect was undermined, however, by the enclosure of his original letter, across which Pullman had handwritten "Sarah -- Send this S. O. B. the 'bedbug letter.'"