Kos And Jet Blue: On Again, Off Again
By now, you’ve surely read that Bill O’Reilly laid into Jet Blue for sponsoring the Daily Kos’ nutroots convention in Chicago.
Kos crowed over at his site earlier that “Jet Blue isn’t going anywhere”, that they assured him they would continue to sponsor it, blah, blah, blah.
Now, instead of crowing, he’s eating crow. Jet Blue said “pull the logo, we’re not sponsoring this anymore.” Except they are.
They pulled the logo, true…but they haven’t (as of this writing) yanked the travel vouchers (which was the extent of the sponsorship).
What’s funny is that Kos made fun of O’Reilly for threatening to not fly on Jet Blue, but immediately after he found out the news that they didn’t want to be seen around him and his ka-razeee kohorts…yup, you guessed it: he said he’d never fly them again. Irony so thick, you can cut it with a knife, folks.
Personally, I could care less who sponsors these things. If Jet Blue wants to give them support, that’s their right. Just as it’s our right not to support Jet Blue. It works both ways. Companies that support political events have to make a decision: is it worth the inevitable loss in business from one side of the political spectrum to support the other side? It’s a question of knowing which side your bread is buttered on.
And besides, the left can hardly cry “foul” over this, because everytime a conservative says something they disagree with (which is every 30 seconds), they threaten to boycott the sponsors. They did it with Ann Coulter, they did it with Rush, they do it with any conservative website. I’ve had them threaten to boycott my advertisers on my site (not that it would hurt me in the slightest, because I don’t make squat off my ads…the loss of $3/month won’t kill me). So it’s not like they’re above boycotting or protesting people who sponsor things or sites they disagree with.
Update: Aw, crap…I KNEW there was one thing I was leaving out.
Kos wrote a rather inflammatory post (not as bad as “Screw them”, but still…) and then almost immediately deleted it:
JetBlue is embarrassed to be associated with you. They are afraid to be seen with you. They don’t want to have anything to do with you. They would rather be seen with Fox News — whose TV programs they broadcast on their planes, than with you.
Of course, if JetBlue is embarrassed to be seen with me, I have no choice but to cut them off. My recommendation to the YearlyKos organization was to return the 10 tickets. I certainly will never fly them again.