Pasta firm Barilla boycotted over 'classic family' remarks

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Who cares? Their products taste like s*** to begin with and are more expensive than any other pasta product on the grocery store shelf.

Stop being disingenuous, Fnord.

The company has two options to respond to consumer pressure: it can resist, or it can conform. If it chooses to resist consumer pressure, then the resultant harm to its employees comes from incompetent management, which fails to respond to its market.

Boycotting doesn't hurt workers unless employers choose to swallow a poison pill.

"Consumer pressure"? Then how do you explain Chick-Fil-A? Their business has exploded since taking a principled stand on homosexual marriage. The hounding of this poor fellow for expressing his beliefs sounds more like the tender mercies of the Deformed Church of Political Correctness than "consumer pressure".

Anyway, it's over...

Source: CNN Article

Nothing more to see here folks ... move along ...

I'd say he has much to learn about courage, as I could make a man with a stiffer spine out of jello. But, as you said, it's over.

Of course not. I said that if he doesn't support homosexuality, then he should not be forced to have it portrayed in his company's commercials. He isn't being hateful and he has a right to that opinion. I just said that it's ok as well for people to oppose him in that and boycott to show it.

How about if he refused to go along with your Politically Correct program?

As far as boycotting him goes, that is certainly your right. But I don't think it's your right to tell him how to run his business.

Having said that, he caved, so this entire conversation is academic. I think I will celebrate by going to lunch at Chick-Fil-A tomorrow though....

It's his company, it's his product, it's his advertising strategy, it's his money, it's his right to sell his product to whomever he wishes in whatever way he wishes.

I really don't see anything offensive in his methods or statements.

What's to explain? A proposed boycott never put serious pressure on the company, and no employee's interests were hurt.

If the Barilla CEO was politically aligned with and was making monetary contributions to certified hate groups like the Chick-Fil-A CEO and Orson Scott Card have been doing, I could see some justification in the boycott. But expressing opinion alone, does create another Paula Deen incident in this case.

The right-wingers in America are going to eat this up and buy his products like crazy as part of their whole "freedom of speech" crusade.

It's weird how in the article, he keeps bringing up the woman's role in the family. I don't get it. Does he think by not having both a mom and dad in his advertisements that he is diminishing the role of women? Do I really wanna know what he meant by the "central role"?

Oh give me strength.

Right wingers in America are going to buy whatever has been rolled back at Wallmart. They are not going drive over to whole foods to buy imported pasta.

Why do you think Barilla backpedalled so fast? Because they know where their market is.

It would make a cold and calculated kind of sense if he was just pandering to homophobic people for their business, but it sounds like the decision to only endorse the 'sacred' family structure was personal. What a silly man. I think he'll lose more business than he'll gain, with this. Maybe a few homophobes will set out to live on Barilla pasta as a show of gratitude, but malnutrition will have to set in eventually

I'm really struggling not to make a highly offensive gay pasta pun right now...

Something to do with a big noodle?

Not a bloody thing. If opinions are that offensive then do not do business with people with whom you have strong emotional disagreements.

ruveyn

It sounds to me like he just wants to use depictions of standard families for marketing purposes. A standard family generally consists of a father, a mother, a son, and a daughter. That way, both genders and age groups have representation. I don't really think of it as discriminatory against people whose family isn't the standard representation, like mine. The vast majority of people in the intended marketing group are also heterosexual, so it's generally better for marketing purposes to depict heterosexual couples. Most companies aren't really interested in doing anything that's bad for marketing, just for the purpose of being politically correct. He didn't even really do anything politically incorrect, he just omitted to do something politically correct.