Celebrate Phil Griffin Day! - Award for Excellence in Corporate Dithering on HATE SPEECH

MSNBC President Phil Griffin at 212-664-4444.

AAAAH. Happy International Women's Day! What a wonderful  time to honor a great figure in women's history. Therefore, logic demands that we pause on International Women's Day to honor  the President of MSNBC, Phil Griffin. Now I don't think Phil is a woman, but that in no way precludes him from being historic this month. Phil has managed to engage in a historic act. Phil may be the first executive in history to need almost A WEEK  to decide whether joking about the systematic rape of Black women is "inappropriate." In fact, Phil is currently breaking all previous corporate records for issuing an response when someone using HIS CORPORATION'S BRAND chooses to engage in both gender-based and race-based hate speech! The "someone" in question is MSNBC contributor and "journalist" Toure. The  hate speech in question are these tweets he made about the systematic rape and torture of Black women during slavery. He then blamed those tweets on his "cousin" taking over his blackberry while he was at "yoga."  In the real world this is known as lying.  At MSNBC, this must be known as creative license. He later admitted that there was no "cousin" and that he had typed almost a dozen tweets of HATE because he was angry.   All of this occurred on a Twitter account associated with MSNBC via the bio section. Even if MSNBC doesn't care about the whole joking about slavery and rape thingy, surely an organization that purportedly provides "news" would be concerned about their contributor:

• LYING- by saying his cousin typed the tweets while he was at yoga.
• COVERUP - by erasing the tweets where he confesses to writing the offending tweets

Now a week ago, I PERSONALLY called MSNBC and managed to get past the receptionist phone screener's path to VOICE MAIL HELL and spoke to a real live human being in Mr. Griffin's office. I read this woman what MSNBC contributor and Twitter Addict Toure said about the rape and torture of Black women during history. She assured me she would be forwarding this information to "the appropriate person ." Having seen no public statement and reviewed Toure's Twitter page, MSNBC is still emblazoned in his bio. Which would indicate to me my message ended up in File 13. So I called back a second day to ask the same woman in Mr. Griffin's office what she had done about the previous message. She then asked for a phone number and an email address. Which I gave her. Now we're a week in and NO EMAIL and no phone message. Last Friday, my readers finally broke out of their post-Christmas malaise and started calling too, apparently now, MSNBC has perfected their VOICEMAIL HELL phone distribution system and are routing all Toure-related calls to voicemail. No problems, you're going to call 212-664-4444 anyway. Every time one of you calls and MSNBC fails to make a public response to this insanity, is an indictment of MSNBC's management. They should have dealt with this on March 1st when this happened. Its not like they were unaware that they had a contributor engaging in hate speech on a Twitter account he was connecting with them. Its been all over the internet, and I did call to inform them about the incident. So plausible deniability is no longer an option. Even if they didn't "realize" that Toure's tweets were hate speech, surely after receiving all of these calls, they would have the common sense to convene a group of all 3 Black MSNBC employees and conduct a focus group. So the only explanation for this massive delay in responding is that they think this thing is going to go away. Today is your day to let them no...um no its not. Objections not Raised are WAIVED! Some have argued that we should just ignore this because Toure is a dysfunctional nobody.  Others have pondered whether they should be doing other things with their "energies" other than "focussing" on Toure and his hateful words. My response is that's complete and total @$#*^&%(*@&$.  These excuses are nothing more that justifications to be apathetic. This phone call takes 120 seconds, maybe 3 minutes and 30 seconds max. Most of you have cell phone plans with either unlimited minutes or anytime minutes so the call costs you less than a cup of coffee. Secondly it takes you longer to make up your mind at Starbucks, than it takes to make a call to say "I Object!" and then go on your merry little way.  You are not so emotionally fragile that a 2 minute phone call will ruin your entire day are cause you to lose focus  of important tasks. Sorry not buying it. You're dithering. Just call and get it over with already. If you won't object to this, what will you object to? This is LOW HANGING fruit. This is not complicated. MSNBC hasn't hesitated to chasten other employees you get out of pocket on Twitter. They didn't take this long to decide to give Don Imus the boot. So what explains this delay??? I don't know, but their silence is deafening. So on today, celebrate Phil Griffin Day by calling him ( or the now designated voicemail) at 212-664-4444 and asking him: What's the delay?  Remind him that MSNBC was QUICK to issue a response to David Shuster's Twitter Antics. Why is this one taking forever? Remind them of the irony that they haven't yet made a decision on whether or how to publicly address Toure's hate speech, but they managed to reach a decision to send all calls related to the matter to VOICE MAIL HELL. Monday Mocking Extravaganza! Oh yes, and you can now consider every Monday until they respond Phil Griffin Monday here on WAOD. I'll just take a few minutes every Saturday to figure out a new way to mock him for dithering. Eventually this story will take root and get wings and they'll not only look bad for enabling Toure, but for taking so long to figure out how to respond. To the intern they've assign to monitor this matter, you may be  wondering if this thing is going away... that would be no. Phil Griffin, we salute you! NOT! PS. This blog does not do "boycotts."  That tool is typically effective for the very powerful and the extremely powerless. I don't fall into either one of those categories.   Those calling for boycotts in the comments section at this stage in the game need to expand your activism options.  There are a wide range of strategic options available to you, including PUBLIC SHAMING and MOCKING that can be far more damaging than empty threats of boycotts. PPS. How do y'all like my peacock, I modeled it myself.  I'm currently converting my Cornel West model into a Toure model. I thought I would have to mothball the Cornel West model when Tavis went and canceled the SOTBU. Yes, if this thing goes into week three, there will be both a Toure and Phil Griffin Model. PREVIOUS POSTS! Toure Scrubs His Twitter Page? Why? – Jayson Blair Revisited. The Ghost of Jayson Blair: Toure, His “cousin”, and David Shuster – MSNBC’s DOUBLE STANDARD

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