Fox News and their right-wing pals are so freaked out over Target’s decision to make children’s toys and bedding gender neutral, you’d think the company was selling gay wedding kits and urging kids to start picking out gay spouses .
Fox has been complaining all week about Target’s decision. Last night, in a natural extension, The O’Reilly Factor helped promote Rev. Franklin Graham’s call for action and boycott.
“They haven’t gone so far as clothing yet,” substitute host Eric Bolling told Graham at the beginning.
Oh, it’s a slippery slope!
GRAHAM: God made us male and female. …God made us. God loves us and God sent his son into this world to save us from our sins. And I think this is just absolutely ridiculous and I think Target has forgotten who’s made their stores strong. It’s American families. Hard-working families.
…I think it’s offending them and I think it’s a slap in their face. This whole gender-neutral business has gone too far.
Reality check: Target says it is implementing the new policy based on customer requests. And please, we’re talking toys and bedding here, not gender neutrality writ large.
But Graham falsely accused Target of “giving in to just one person who sent out an email and some others picked it up.”
Rather than point out the truth – which is that many of those “hard-working, American families” have applauded Target’s change, Bolling handed Graham an opening to promote his boycott. “What are you asking those hard-working families that have made Target great… what are you asking them to do?” Bolling asked.
GRAHAM: I’m asking them to speak out. I think they need to let their store managers know. I think they need to send an email or call the corporate headquarters and voice their opinion. And of course, we have the freedom of competition out there. You don’t have to shop at Target. Maybe they just might want to take their business somewhere else.
Bolling played “devil’s advocate” by making this about the LGBT community. “There are literally tens of billions of dollars of disposable income in the LGBT community, the gay community, that they may be targeting, going after those dollars. It might be a good business decision.”
Or it might have nothing to do with LGBT issues. It just so happens I recently shopped for a gift for a seven-year old girl from a traditional family at Target and it was darned annoying trying to figure out whether a toy “involving animals,” as she had requested, would be in the boys or girls section. I had to scour both.
But Graham dismissed Bolling’s suggestion that Target had made a business decision. Why? Because Chick-fil-A.
GRAHAM: Remember when they came after Chick-fil-A and Governor Huckabee, God bless him, he organized a Chick-fil-A day? …And that was the largest sales that Chick-fil-A had had across this country. …And sure, there’ll be gays and lesbians and sure they’re free to shop at Target like anyplace else and they ought to be treated friendly. But to start organizing your store just to suit them? And you’re ignoring the millions of customers that you have that are just hard-working families with children and they’re not gender-neutral children. These are boys and girls, the way God made us. And I think Target needs to recognize that.
Watch it below, from the August 12 The O’Reilly Factor and let me know which is worse: the willful ignorance or the mean-spiritedness.
Also, check out The Young Turks’ deconstruction of a Fox & Friends discussion on the subject that was just as bad.
As someone who has 2 adorable little nieces who are into superheros (Superman and Batman), now they don’t have to go to the “Boys” section to get their new bedspreads and matching sheets. They can just head to the bedding dept. and get what they want without there being a some stupid gender designation. I say good deal!
FOX “news” – they are all about whipping up the outrage. Anger and distortion is all they have left.
Apparently, a Facebook user decided to spoof Target and respond to some “outraged” consumers. (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/08/13/1411797/-Facebook-user-pretends-to-be-Target-help-desk-and-trolls-incensed-conservatives )
Normally, spoof accounts should be punished but, whoever was behind the spoof needs to be applauded for the way he dealt with the troglodytes. (You really should read some of the “offended” comments and then read the spoofer’s replies.)
The funniest thing about this, though, is that Graham is “bearing false witness” as he does so often. The fact that he lies so often and gets away with it. Since it’s one of those Big Ten Commandments (that Roy Moore and his ilk are always trying to foist on government buildings and property at taxpayer expense), you’d think by now that the Original God Father or the Original Number One Son would’ve gotten around to some good old-fashioned Biblical smiting. (The fact that very little of the divinely-based smiting seems to happen nowadays would suggest that God and Jesus are all a bunch of hooey—especially as God specifically did a whole lot of that smiting stuff back in the day.)
