Background: you may have missed this, but Tuesday night a pizza joint (Memories Pizza) in Michiana, Indiana got blindsided by Alyssa Marino of ABC News 57. Ms. Marino went looking for somebody who would be willing to suffer personal attacks and death threats for saying that no, they wouldn’t cater a gay wedding – and the owners of the pizzeria made the mistake of trusting a reporter. They said that, in the unlikely case they were ever asked*, they would say no: Ms. Marino had got her scoop; and now the pizza joint is closed.
So, hey, score one for Alyssa Marino. Not that she’s ever going to get out of Indiana. The media has strict quotas for flyover country, and she probably doesn’t have the right J-school degree.
At any rate, some folks I know got a little upset over watching a bunch of mouth-breathing, fascism-loving semi-literate trash sweep in from the Internet to defecate all over a restaurant’s walls (which the aforementioned trash so totally would have done in real-time, if only they had the nerve), so a GoFundMe account was set up. They aimed for $25K; they’ve made almost $214K for Memories Pizza instead. In less than 24 hours.
I agree with Allahpundit that this is a pallative, not a cure: a cure would involve finding out who advertises on ABC News 57, and informing those advertisers that you will not be using their products while they still advertise on that station. Because it’s no good yelling at the station. The station figures that people yelling at them are also watching them, which helps their advertising rates. But those advertisers won’t advertise there if they think that they’re not getting good value for their money. So do that, instead.
Also: never trust a reporter**. But hopefully you knew that already.
Moe Lane
*Just having a pizzeria cater your wedding is sufficiently unusual to count as being ‘news.’ At least, on local stations.
**You can like them, you can talk to them, you can even give them a quote. But never, ever, ever trust them.
I just keep thinking that the media isn’t going to change this behavior until it starts coming back with metaphorical stumps when reaching into the “set local business owner up for global death threats” cage.
.
Sponsors are good target material, but it seems like not quite enough. These reporters ought to be having Hard Conversations with their employers as to why they’re Making Life Difficult.
had i a bit of money to blow, i’d hire a researcher to see how badly Ms. Marino’s life could be trashed. and that of whoever assigned her the story. and anyone who helped on this travesty. because equality of personal destruction.