[Imc-cleveland] Letter to Amy Goodman

[ahlibbie at aol.com]

This is a letter sent to Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! on Friday, Sept. 29th:
 
Dear Amy:
 
First thank you for the fantastic work you do on Democracy Now.  
 
I understand you may be on the Colbert Report next week.  If you get a chance, I really hope you'll ask Stephen about army recruitment advertising used during the show.  You may not see the ads where you are, but we see them in the Cleveland-Akron market and not everyone is happy about it.  I hope you're not happy about it, either.  
 
Below is a letter sent to Comedy Central, Common Dreams, Counterpunch, and several newspapers around the country.  
 
Please bring up Comedy Centrals army recruitment practices when you're on the show.  
 
And thanks for being a voice of truth out there in the world of "truthiness"....
 
Best Regards,
Amy Hanmer
 
*    *    *
 
9-27-06
Open Letter To Comedy Central/Viacom from Kent, Ohio Anti-War Activists
By Amy Hanmer
 
Members of the Kent, Ohio anti-war group, Portagepeace are again requesting that you stop running Army ads during The Colbert Report.  The Colbert Report appears on Comedy Central, the cable network owned by Viacom.  Portagepeace is a community anti-war coalition of individuals, families and students who work in and around Kent to promote peace through weekly vigils and counter-recruitment (www.portagepeace.org).
 
Why is Comedy Central partially financed by the Department of Defense?  I have observed ads repeatedly  promoting the Army during the youth-aimed Colbert Report, which airs three times per day, Monday through Thursday and once on Friday.  This boils down to conditioned viewing (saturation advertising) of Army ads by kids thinking about what to do with their lives. There are no ads promoting any other life options, such as the decision to go to college.  Viacom evidently embraces combat, not college.  Therefore, it can be concluded they find it lucrative and therefore morally acceptable to send a strong message that electing to die in Iraq is a viable career option.  This is predatory behavior on their part.
 
Mikes Hard Lemonade and its sexed up ads also aimed at the young, round out the Comedy Central commercial offerings.  These sponsors must do a dynamic job assisting the network rake in the dough.  So why then, in a time of war, when 61% of the American people are against the occupation (CNN Poll, August 2006) is Comedy Central entertaining the whims of the Pentagon?  Viacom executive of the board and Army Commendation recipient, Sumner Redstone, is no doubt comfortable with the arrangement. 
(http://www.viacom.com/management.jhtml).  
 
For those unfamiliar with the show, The Colbert Report is a therapeutic, hilarious parody of The O’Reilly Factor.  Undeniably, Stephen Colbert is a balm of relief from the Bush presidency.  The show mocks Bush’s failed Iraq war on one hand, then ironically supports it during commercial breaks via ads urging our kids to join the Army.  A media outlet promoting military recruitment while the U.S. is at war, supports that war.  This isn’t about competition and the free market.  This is about military-industrial complex exploitation of the media.  In fact, The American Heritage Dictionary defines fascism as “A system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership”.  
 
The Iraq war recently hit home in our small suburb near Akron, Ohio.  Joe Tomci, a 21 year-old marine from Stow, was tragically killed August 2nd in Iraq by a roadside bomb.  Tomci’s death, in the words of our mayor, “hit us like a bolt of lightening”.  You can say that again.  Perhaps Comedy Central/Viacom would consider pulling Army ads from the Cleveland-Akron market out of courtesy.  Indeed. 
http://www.stowsentry.com/article.php?pathToFile=/articles/news/&file=_news1.txt&article=1&tD=&PHPSESSID=007cf64a29ec2c9d1696f63f2419ed15.  
 
Some viewing areas enjoy watching The Colbert Report free of Army recruitment.  I recently watched The Colbert Report in Ocean City on three successive evenings.  No Army ads.  It might be that Nielson rates the Cleveland-Akron area number 16 in their list of 210 designated market areas.  Salisbury, Maryland (45 minutes from Ocean City) is number 148.  http://www.nielsenmedia.com/DMAs.html.  The higher your city on this list, the more TV homes you have and the more attractive you are to advertisers.  This further illustrates the use of predatory, literally life and death marketing by Comedy Central/Viacom.
 
The fat cats at Viacom may think, “Grow up kid, this is the way the world works”.  I am here to tell you this is not the way your anti-war audience conducts their lives.   The war is a lie.  The recent senate report confirms this, stating that Iraq was not reconstituting its nuclear program and that Saddam Hussein had no connections to al Qaeda.  These were Bush’s selling points in pitching the war deal to the American people.  
 
Therefore, I call on all who feel the war is just plain wrong to boycott Comedy Central until Army ads have been permanently removed.  Send Viacom a clear message that military recruitment is unwelcome in our living rooms at http://www.comedycentral.com/help/questionsCC.jhtml
 
Amy Hanmer
Stow, Ohio  
___________
Note to anti-war activists, please feel free to e-mail Amy Goodman at mail at democracynow.org with your thoughts.  
OR CALL HER AT:   212-431-9090.  --Amy H.
 

 
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