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Contributors
Hugh Hewitt - Principal Contributor
Mr.
Hewitt is senior member of theOneRepublic & CaliforniaRepublic.org
editorial board. [go to Hewitt index]
 Targeting
Target For Some Questions
Retailer kicks out Salvation Army...
[Hugh Hewitt] 12/7/04
Just before
Thanksgiving, Target got some press coverage it didn't
want – articles
in a variety of newspapers and on "Fox News" about the retailer's
decision to exile the Salvation Army and its kettles from the
front of its more that 1,100 stores nationwide. Target's
decision will cost the homeless – the least and the lost – about
$9 million this year alone. If Target doesn't reverse its
policy, that loss will compound every year into the future.
Target has
explained to the legion of angry ex-Target shoppers who have
e-mailed the company at guest.relations@target.com that it
found the exception it was granting to its no solicitations
policy to have become too unwieldy. Ex-Target customers noted
that Wal-Mart and other stores had found a way to let the Army
ring its bells, and refused to accept Target's protestations
of good corporate citizenship based upon its otherwise fine
record of giving.
This is the
Christmas season, after all – a time anchored in the story
of a family that needed help receiving the comfort they needed
from strangers. It has also struck many that it is unusually
churlish that a retailer – which has grown large on the
tradition of gift giving begun with the Three Kings of the
Orient's travel to Bethlehem – would find it necessary
to sever their one obvious tie with the original meaning of
the season.
The Yahoo
message board has been aflame with back and forths – often
profane – and www.dontshoptarget.com has
sprung up. It will be months until Target's 4th Quarter
results are known and compared to Wal-Mart's, but the angry
shoppers of 2004 will stay angry for many years, and many thousands,
and perhaps hundreds of thousands, will not return to the store
that is giving Scrooge and Marley a run for their reputed money.
There is
one other twist. The fine research hospital, St. Jude of Memphis,
Tenn., has picked this year to launch "Thanks & Giving," a
holiday season appeal for support for research into the cures
for pediatric cancer. This effort has vast support among Hollywood
elites and corporate America. Among the supporters is Target, which
is selling gift cards, $5 the face value of which is immediately
peeled off and sent to St. Jude, and which is also matched – up
to $1.2 million – by Target.
Now this
looks like charity, but is it? Does Target use the charitable
impulse of its shoppers to increase gift card sales, and does
the percentage of gift cards sold but unused more than offset
Target's $1.2 million?
Did St. Jude
insist on the exiling of Salvation Army as a condition of Target's
participation in the big roll out of this glitzy new campaign?
Is St. Jude considered a "safe charity," secular with a sectarian
name, and fun to be associated with given the glamour of the
Hollywood affiliates?
Research
into pediatric cancer is indeed a noble cause, but did St.
Jude muscle out – intentionally or unintentionally – the
dowdy old, very Christian Salvation Army with its unglamorous
business of feeding drunks and clothing homeless?
These are
questions not intended to detract from the fine work that the
researchers at St. Jude undertake, or the genuine need for
funds given to support that research. But it is all a little
too coincidental for me.
Target has
hurt itself, and in a way that will replicate every day, week,
month and year that its exile of the bell ringers and the kettles
continues. What were they thinking? And were they obliged by
agreement with St. Jude to do the deed?
And would
the original St. Jude approve of the exiling of the Salvation
Army? tOR
§
theOneReublic Principal
Contributor Hugh Hewitt is an author, television commentator
and syndicated talk-show host of the Salem Radio Network's Hugh
Hewitt Show, heard in over 40 markets around the country.
He blogs regularly at HughHewitt.com and
he frequently contributes opinion pieces to the Weekly
Standard.
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