Sunday, November 7, 2010

Back On Target - Not a Bulls-eye

Today, for the first time in months, I actually pulled out the Target ad from the newspaper and looked at it. Flipped all the way through it. Contemplated going to Target to buy a few things.

You see, when I decided that I wasn't going to shop at Target because of their sizable donation to MN Forward last summer, my decision was that I would stop shopping there until they either made a large donation to a gay-friendly candidate OR the election was over. The latter, of course, means that the money that they had spent in that one race would have run its course and - for better or worse - be "done."

Well, this being Minnesota, the gubernatorial race is going to be heading into a recount. But, since there aren't any ads or anything during a recount, that means that the money that Target gave, in essence to a single personally-incredibly-repulsive candidate, is now done. That donation no longer holds any sway in the political future of the state - or... by totally over-rationalized extension... my life as a gay man in the state. (The candidate, now in the recount, may still screw up my life in the future, but the advertising money won't.)

Interesting that, while I was making this decision today, I was flipping through the Minneapolis newspaper and found an article stating that - while Target says they didn't see any noticeable drop in revenues after the not-well-thought-out donation to MN Forward - they have suffered an eleven-percent drop among people who used to consider Target to be a highly moral/ethical company. Sure, many of those people may still like Target, but they no longer "like like" Target. I guess you could say that now people think of Target as being just a tad "off-target."

So... With the full realization that Target is neither the most culturally bankrupt of corporations, nor the least... I plan to start shopping there again in the near future. We'll see how it goes.

And I'll keep keeping an eye on the political donations of my favorite corporations in the future.

Lesson learned... hopefully on both sides.

1 comment:

Mae said...

Just make sure they give you the full value of your coupons ;-)