Fuck off, Bob Jones: and advertisers? Be warned

• QoT
• 11 years ago
• Categories: activism, newspapers, you couldn't make this shit up
• Tags: bob jones, nz herald

Bob Jones has produced another disgusting “opinion piece”, and the New Zealand Herald has once again been disgusting enough to publish it.

I completely understand that a lot of people don’t have the spoons for taking on yet another awful triggery misogynist piece of shit produced by an awful misogynist piece of shit.  On this occasion, I do.  Hence this post.

The URL of the article is:

http:// www.nzherald.co.nz/ opinion/news/article.cfm?c_id=466&objectid=11143714

A precis of the article for those who do not wish to feed the Herald’s amoral clickbait campaign:

• This one time, Bob Jones was in Viet Nam, and he noticed that women can’t drive
• Then he badgered Hutt City Council to not install traffic lights all over the place
• Now there are roundabouts and women can’t use them and even women he knows agree with him
• Anyway, he once bought a totally awesome penis substitute car and he drove totally awesomely but bitches complained ’cause they ain’t shit
• So he laughed at the Police letter he received and told them (CONTENT NOTE: and here’s where I quote the awful violent bit)

I replied, first pointing out that passing is not illegal and adding that while normally I don’t condone police violence, this was an exception and they would be doing God’s work by going to the complainants’ homes, beating the crap out of them and burning their houses down.

• Then he interpreted the automatic form letter he received in response as agreement.
• Finally, he makes a hilarious joke about how Saudi Arabia shouldn’t let women drive because lol, bitches can’t drive.

Dovil has also provided a write-up, fed through a What Bob’s Really Thinking translator. Di W has challenged Bob to a parallel park-off.  Rachel Rayner has a nice little template for you to complain to the editor – before you complain to the Press Council.

And I’ve been tweeting companies whose ads appear on the article.  These include:

• ASB Bank – no response
• Jetstar – no response
• iHeartRadio – who, to their credit, acknowledged the tweet, but stated they can’t control where their ads end up.  I say: demand a better contract.
• Accor Hotels – no response
• Nissan – no response – but so ironic
• RealMe – the new government login service.  I can’t tell if this account is genuine so tweeted NZ Post instead.

Companies which don’t have Twitter accounts I can easily locate are:

• Sovereign Insurance
• State Insurance

… which is a pity, because I’d love to know if either of them would cover my house in the circumstances of the Police burning it down to punish me for driving too cautiously to suit Sir Bob.

The problem, once again, is less Bob Jones being a hateful piece of shit, and more that The Herald will obviously continue to publish schlock to match their page size as long as it generates pageviews and sells advertising.

I don’t expect this story to be the final nail in the coffin.  I don’t expect to change the world overnight.  But I know that pressuring advertisers can get results (admittedly, with a well-run social media campaign and a few tens-of-thousands of activists).  So I’m going to do what I can.

ETA

The hashtag is #boycottbobjones, and more advertisers are being tweeted:

• Auckland Council
• Mitsubishi (the irony)
• Red Bull (oh god the irony)