Whoopi and Garry

I heard on the news this morning that Whoopi Goldberg had been dropped as a spokesperson by Slim-Fast but I didn't stick around to find out why. I wondered if it had something to do with something she said regarding politics and, sure enough, it did:

Comic Whoopi Goldberg's sexual puns on President Bush's name at a John Kerry fundraiser got her canned Wednesday as spokeswoman for Slim-Fast weight-loss products.

In all likelihood, the left will once again raise the cry of "censorship!" However, just like what happened to the Dixie Chicks, it's nothing of the kind. Slim-Fast has a brand image to protect. It doesn't want itself associated with the kind of speech that Whoopi was putting forth. I would expect the same result if she had made similar remarks about Kerry. Once again we are treated to a demonstration of the fact that free speech does not mean free of consequences. You won't be prevented from saying what you want to say, but you're still going to have to deal with the fallout.

Whoopi's response contains both good and bad. First, the good:

Unrepentant, Goldberg said in a written statement Wednesday that "just because I'm no longer in those (commercial) spots, it doesn't mean I will stop talking. While I can appreciate what the Slim-Fast people need to do in order to protect their business, I must also do what I need to do as an artist, as a writer and as an American — not to mention as a comic."

She's not blaming Slim-Fast; she understands that they have their brand image to look after and that they had the legal right to terminate her contract when and how they did. Now the bad:

"I only wish that the Republican re-election committee would spend as much time working on the economy as they seem to be spending trying to harm my pocketbook," Goldberg said.

Naturally, it's all the Republicans' fault. In actuality, it's nobody's "fault." Rather, it's the result of individual Americans exercising their right to tell a company that they disapprove of its spokesperson and will discontinue buying that company's product until it does something about it. Slim-Fast did, indeed, do something about it and was entirely within its rights to do so.

Remember folks, not only do you have freedom of speech, you have the right to express yourself with your wallet.

On to the other part of this post. I just came across this article linked on Neal Boortz's website. I actually do read Doonesbury daily. I disagree with a lot of what he writes but I do think he has a fine wit. One of the current storylines deals with how one long-running character, B.D., is dealing with the loss of his left leg while serving as a soldier in Iraq. To be honest, I think that he's handling it pretty well. B.D. isn't whining about how "I lost my leg because of George W. Bush's lies." Instead he's been more-or-less upbeat. Sure, there's been trauma and a form of grieving for the lost limb, but I think that Mr. Trudeau is trying to present this character's story in a realistic way, albeit with a humorous tone. He's showing that, in war, stuff like this does happen, our soldiers do pay a price, and that they're real people who react like real people do to events like this. He's letting it speak for itself and not trying to beat us over the head with it. Of course, he saves the head-beating for other characters and storylines but that's a topic for another post should I decide to write it.