Peer Pressure

Posted on May 27, 2005 in Courage & Activism

The trick seems new to the Left, but conservatives have been doing it for years, I think. When a corporation isn’t acting as you want it to act, you bypass the government (which doesn’t bother to enforce the law these days) and go straight to the board of directors. Then put a guilt trip on them.

Apparently it is working for environmental groups. PR pit bull Eric Dezenhall said:

“The desire of corporations to be accepted by the marketplace and to be personally liked has spawned an entire industry of activism and corporate capitulation that I’ve never seen before – it’s unprecedented … I’ve seen situations where companies are simply being harassed so badly that it pays to get out of a certain endeavor just to make the harassment stop.”

So that explains it. CEOs are stuck back in High School. What matters to them is not profits or integrity or honesty or what is good for the community but how their peers will see them. It’s the big sedans and the nice houses and people saying nice things about them that count.

The rest of us who have progressed past this stage of development: take heed. Could we start a similar lobbying campaign against, say, Diebold? I’ll leave it to someone else to map out the plans.