I really don't Boycott businesses or companies. There are places I avoid, but that's usually due to other concerns. The title of the thread is 'Boycott' and many have raised the question about boycotting the NFL over players protest. The thread is in 'shopping and sales' and not in 'Politics and Goverment', so I'll hold my comments.
The NFL is selling a product too. If I had intended the topic to be restricted to the NFL, I would have started it either in politics or in the sports thread. But since most boycotts involve retail stores, I put it here. National boycotts do work. There are often news reports attesting to that but, of course, if it's a conservative boycott of something, you might read it once, but they're not going repeat their coverage of it. They don't work to the extent that companies crash and burn due to a boycott but a reduction in profit has a negative effect on stock prices, CEO's have resigned, and companies have been forced to walk back some of what brought it on. The Netflix boycott has been mentioned in articles about their loss in business. Their CEO is retiring, and the boycott has been mentioned in connection with that, as well, but most of the media won't mention it and those that do will never mention it again. Liberal boycotts are far more effective, and that's for two reasons. One, they can be depended upon to have the media on their side, so their boycotts will get far more coverage, most of it positive. Secondly, I think liberals are far more willing to boycott than conservatives are. Far too many conservatives will continue to do business with whoever they've been doing business with, regardless, preferring to keep politics, moral values, and business separate.
I think the NFL boycott has some effect, but it appears that the owners are more afraid of their employees than their customers. I didn't watch any NFL games last year and don't plan to watch any this year either. I was a Steelers fan for over 50 years (as I said in another post) and I think the Steelers fan base is suffering the most from the boycott. I do enjoy having my Sundays free again. My other boycott is MasterCard. When I was younger and needed a credit card, MasterCard and American Express turned me down. Other companies, namely Visa but there were others also gladly gave credit even though I had previously been a "cash only" guy and hadn't borrowed money. I have refused MasterCard many times since then, and, since Cabela's/Bass Pro Shops are switching to MasterCard from Visa, I will be cancelling my account with them.
The big danger, to companies, is that some of boycotters won't be back after the boycott is over. People get out of the habit of watching NFL football, they find other stores that they like as well, or they learn to do without whatever it was that they were boycotting. A while back, I read that baseball never recovered from the 1995 baseball strike. It wasn't a boycott but a lot of people never went back, or major league baseball was never again as important to them.
@Ken Anderson I agree with that idea. I, too, was once a big baseball fan, but in that case, when making millions to play a game wasn't enough, I simply lost interest in MLB. I, too, think the same thing will happen to the NFL, although in this case, the protesters, who have profited greatly from playing a game, are having difficulty stating what they what they are protesting. It started with a has-been quarterback, who was losing his very short career and was about to be fired trying to gain sympathy and now has become a protest of things non-material and ill-defined.
Yes, I think it will be true about the NFL as well. On the surface, a boycott seeks to force the business to do something. Beneath the surface, people form long-lasting opinions that won't necessarily go away when the boycott is over. For Netflix, people may find that they can get along just fine with Hulu or one of the many others. Netflix offers a lot but a big part of their dominance is that they were the first, or at at least one of the first. Now there are other choices. Locally, the closest restaurant to me is within easy walking distance. My wife and I used to eat breakfast there a few times a week, and that was where locals would usually meet for lunch or whatever. A new owner decided to support the new National Park they want to build around us, which most local people oppose. He could have easily gotten away with taking that position personally, but he started putting up pro-Park signs in the restaurant and petitions at the check-out counter. In frustration, during a public discussion on the subject, he said that he didn't even need local support for his restaurant. That may have been before he had spent a winter here when local customers are pretty much all anyone has. He was able to learn whether this was accurate because I don't know of anyone who lives here who has been there in the past few years. A long-time waitress there told us that it was empty most of the time. Even locals who supported the park didn't go there often because their friends and family members weren't. Now, this restaurant is only open for a couple of months in the summer when the Appalachian Trail hikers are coming in, and it's for sale. This is a beautiful area but there are beautiful areas all over Maine, and this is not a year-round tourist destination. Baxter State Park is nice, but people don't come from other states to visit Baxter State Park. Snowmobiling is big, but that's pretty much local too. About the only out-of-state traffic we get is based on this being the end of the Appalachian Trail and a rafting business, which has been the biggest backer of the National Park, given that this would guarantee that no one would ever be able to come in to compete with him.
My parents and quite a few others in Wallace quit shopping at the only local grocery store, an IGA store that my grandfather used to own, when the new owner began selling beer and wine. In a town of 200, he probably noticed but he didn't quit selling beer and wine. I don't think my parents ever went back to that store, however. Incidentally, the store they shopped at in Menominee also sold beer and wine.
Right now about the only thing I boycott is Hollyweird, and the music industry. I suspect (but cannot prove) a secret deal between them and Clinton that lead to the DMCA, which gutted the Fair Use rights. This was about the time the Republicans were trying to pass some sort of censorship law on Hollyweird, and Clinton went riding to their rescue. I suspect the deal was that Hollyweird would censor themselves to throw a bone to the conservatives, and double-up on their efforts at social control (i.e. push hard the liberal agenda). In return, Clinton would convince the Republicans to back off, and pass the entertainment industry's much coveted DMCA. Anyway, the last time I went to a movie theatre was in 2000, which is also when I stopped buying new DVDs and CDs (I now buy only used ones from record shops, Amazon, etc). So far as I can tell, I have banned the entertainment industry from my wallet.
Al Gore's wife was a spokesperson for the move to censor Hollywood and the music industry while her husband was Vice President and Clinton was President.
Don't recall that, and cannot find anything on Google about it. Are you sure you ain't thinking of her mad-on campaign to censor the music industry, via the Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC)? What I'm thinking of was a direct attack on Hollyweird. Vaguely recall had something to do with Bob Dole. Clinton on TV playing some trumpet or clarinet or something at some gala event, maybe this (https://www.nytimes.com/1996/09/12/us/a-hollywood-production-political-money.html )? Republicans going bonkers about it. Rumblings about some bill to censor Hollyweird.....then it all just goes away. Later Hollyweird announces something about it will police itself.
Yeah, that's about what I recall, her on a tear to censor the music industry, but I just ain't finding nothing about her doing anything similar to Hollyweird. All I have managed to track down is bits'n'pieces: http://articles.latimes.com/1995-06-02/entertainment/ca-8556_1_bob-dole https://books.google.com/books?id=I...epage&q=bob dole hollywood censorship&f=false https://www.washingtonpost.com/arch...ca-7c6b-4718-b85d-b277466481be/?noredirect=on
The VFW. There are not many Vietnam vets who feel the same as I do so I guess it’s just a personal thing but it’s going to stay that way. Within the first year after coming back from Nam, I tried to join the VFW but was refused at the door by a rather indignant idiot who told me the reason I didn’t qualify was that I wasn’t a veteran of a declared foreign war. He told me that the only way I could even come in was if I was a guest of a member, then promptly slammed the door. By that time, it was already well known that by ‘69 as many or more American soldiers had died in combat than either declared war so it didn’t make sense to me why the VFW hadn’t amended their constitution in favor of Korean “conflict” vets and Vietnam “police action” vets. Declared or not, both were wars and no one, yesterday or today, can convince me otherwise. A few years later, a VFW member told me that they had started accepting Vietnam vets and my retort was that their membership must be falling off due to the fact that WWI and WWII vets were dying off and they must be needing the money. Of course, what made that particular day was that at the time, I was a 6 year executive officer for my American Legion Post which by the bye, has always received all military vets with a DD-214. As for me, the VFW has not seen nor will ever see my figure darkening their door nor will their banking deposits have even one cent of my money in it.
Just my take on the NFL Boycott and 'Protest'. 48 years ago I took an Oath to "support and defend the Constitution of the United States" and never read there was a time limit on this Oath. A Protest that does not physically harm people is something I was taught to defend. My problem is with the fans that have always treated the National Anthem as a chance to grab a beer, find their seats and not removing their hats. These are the same ones who complain about the players protest. I see no difference. The average time for the playing of our National Anthem is 1 minute and 34 seconds. To me, it is short time to stop and show some sort of respect. The 'National Defense Authorization Act of 2008' stated that un-uniformed service members, Veterans and Military Retirees could render a hand salute during the National Anthem. I do this at games and you can imagine the looks and head shaking one gets by doing this. Everyone on the forum is old enough to remember the the 60's/70's protest of the Vietnam War and some of us remember the 'Welcome' home we received. Taking a knee during the National Anthem is a pretty mild form of protest. I enjoy football, as most on the forum know and will continue to go to games.
Probably unrelated but the VFW here in Millinocket closed a few months ago, and their building sits empty, while the American Legion has things going on in their building all the time, including a member bar that is open every day, I think. I was in attendance at a War Resisters League planning meeting where that was a hot topic for discussion. The poor reception that returning veterans often received was not spontaneous but promoted by those who held leadership positions in the movement. The idea was to make enlistments unpopular and to encourage draft resistance. As a tactic, I suppose it made sense, but in the same way that tarring and feathering merchants who continued to do business with the British during the Revolutionary War made sense. It was an uneasy and immoral thing to do, but there was some tactical reasoning behind it. Had it been put to a vote, I don't think it would have won because most people had friends and family members who were serving, voluntarily or not.