great to have you on the program today let's talk about Hobby Lobby
there's a blog called hopelessly partisan were
activist ken berlet's wrote about his friend's recent experience at a new
hobby Lobby store
in the town of Marlborough New Jersey which has a large Jewish population
and he said that his friend was a visiting the craft in home decor store
and he was told we don't cater to your people
when he and his friends asked whether they carried bar mitzvah cards they were
they also noted that there were no hannukah related crafts even though
there were
all of these you know curved a
Christmas related charge he's usually you have some hannukah related charge
he's there to there were none
and the new jersey sales associate associate attributed the lack of jewish
merchandise
to the company's notorious fundamentalist CEO David Green
now over the course above the days that followed this
word started spreading about how Hobby Lobby doesn't carry any products related
to Jewish holidays
and it started a boycott now this led to Hobby Lobby putting out a statement
saying
alleged comments made by employees are currently being investigated
and will be addressed accordingly these comments are in no way indicative
I've Hobby Lobby culture the owners and the operators
so addicting info's journalists juniper Russo said
I decided to do a little research of my own first I wanted my nearest local
hobby lobby in Hixson Tennessee
and sure enough there was nary a minority be found among all the tacky
Christmas stuff that the company had on their shelves
I spoke to a young sales associate and asked her if that was true
that Hobby Lobby didn't carry any merchandise for Jewish holidays
she looked at me like a deer in the headlights and said we're a christian
company
it's nothing personal if it were up to me
you now next juniper called the company's customer service line which
was
suspiciously removed from their website in the hours following the breaking up
this scandal
juniper tracked it down left the message was assured
she would receive a call back and did not the next step was to post messages
to hobby lobby's Facebook page
which she along with many others did they were all deleted within seconds
almost like someone is literally monitoring the page in the leading
comments asking about the lack of Jewish stuff in the stores
so Hobby Lobby is a christian company and by that they don't mean they're just
owned by a fundamentalist Christian they mean they seem to only want
Christian customers and if they were allowed they would probably only have
Christian
employees they have it in their mission statement that they quote
honor the Lord in all we do by
operating the company in a manner consistent with biblical
principles so yeah you know this is that this is a a free economy
Hobby Lobby while they can't of course band jews from going to their store they
can care you're not carry absolutely any items that they want
however they I are also going the route
of trying to deny their female employees the right to birth control
and %ah they are following a
a trend that we have recognized many times before by so-called Christian
employers my question to them lewis's don't you realize Jesus was a Jew
well they probably don't like to talk about that
and I i noticed that I did notice that Terry I
I believe there's some hobby lobby's around here around me here in Texas
I'm well I guess I'd will never be setting foot in one now
gia and honestly I don't know that I'd be going to this those stores anyway
because they'd really do carry
like the the most be the judge the cheesiest stuff for whatever holiday
dessert how to buy something for
but so a lot of people are are understandably upset about this
although the counter-argument Louis is not a crazy one which is hold on
they don't have to carry anything they don't want to
which is absolutely true but if the reason why they don't have these things
coincides with why they are pushing this kind of Christian fundamentalism honor
on employees the birth control health care thing we've talked about
doesn't seem like a particularly good company to to %uh patronize and I would
I would suggest
not shopping right it seems like
at those religious truth to this company reach you
all around every store in every employee unfortunately I do not think that's a
good way to do business in clearly
it's going to hurt them now while I every I hope it does