The Cowardice Of Lowe’s, And The Bigotry Of ‘All-American Muslim’ Bashers

As you may have heard, home improvement giant Lowe’s pulled their advertising from TLC’s All-American Muslim. That in and of itself might not be a massive sin — companies have a right to spend their advertising dollars where they like, or order for a few episodes and don’t re-up. But Lowe’s, at every step of the way, has managed to give the impression that they’re rather aggressively folding to virulent Islamophobes.

First, there was the fact that the news of the ad pull appeared to break when an email from Lowe’s — explaining that “There are certain programs that do not meet Lowe’s advertising guidelines, including the show you brought to our attention” — appeared on the website of the Florida Family Association, an organization that appears to spend more of its time organizing boycotts of shows like Degrassi for “[promoting] the transgender lifestyle,” than advocating for family-friendly policies. I contacted Jaclyn Pardini, one of Lowe’s spokeswomen, for more information about the decision, and got, in exchange, what appeared to be Lowe’s standard policy statement at the beginning of the weekend:

We did not pull our advertisements based solely on the complaints or emails of any one particular group. In an effort to be objective, and on a case-by-case basis, we will pull our advertising on shows if we learn there are issues raised from a broad spectrum of customers and viewers who represent multiple perspectives, which Lowe’s understands was the case in this situation with this particular show. We understand the program raised concerns, complaints, or issues from multiple sides of the viewer spectrum, which we found after doing research of news articles and blogs covering the show. We based our decision to pull the advertising on this research and after hearing the concerns we received through emails, calls, through social media and in news reports.

I asked Ms. Pardini twice to clarify what the concerns from “multiple sides” of the viewer spectrum were, given that the most prominent voices calling for the boycott of All-American Muslim appear to be prominent Islamophobes. She did not respond to my requests for an explanation, I suspect because there isn’t one. In the mean time, when Nathan Cerruti thanked the company for dropping the ads on Twitter by linking to a post about the ad pull from Bare Naked Islam, which bears the cheery tagline “It isn’t Islamophobia when they really ARE trying to kill you,” Lowe’s responded by thanking him for his business, while saying nothing about his views. Things like this do not exactly give the impression that, as Lowe’s insisted in a Facebook post later, “We have a strong commitment to diversity and inclusion, across our workforce and our customers, and we’re proud of that longstanding commitment.”

The apology itself is really a remarkably craven document, with the company dodging any responsibility by saying:

Lowe’s has received a significant amount of communication on this program, from every perspective possible. Individuals and groups have strong political and societal views on this topic, and this program became a lighting rod for many of those views. As a result we did pull our advertising on this program. We believe it is best to respectfully defer to communities, individuals and groups to discuss and consider such issues of importance.

This isn’t a defense of deeply-held values. This is a dodge of having any deeply-held or defensible values at all. I would really love to know which of these perspectives advocated by All-American Muslim are so radioactive and controversial that a company can’t be associated with them.

Is it that rigorous, respectful conversations about how people live their faith are healthy for communities and individual believers?

Is it that men should be invested and involved in their wives’ pregnancies and their children’s early lives?

Is it that accusations of discrimination should be leveled carefully?

Is it that duty to community should come before opportunities for personal aggrandizement?

Because these are the big issues in All-American Muslim. This is where the drama comes from. And this, plus the idea that Muslims deserve to be judged by a majority of believers rather than a small minority, is all you have to believe is true to support the show. I’ve never really understood why Muslims in particular shouldn’t have that last right. Should all depictions of Christians include references to the Inquisition, religion-inflected colonialism, and anti-gay hate crimes? Is the truest way to depict Catholics to look at the faith from the perspective of Cardinal Law and the pedophiles he protected? Do we judge all Jews by a car accident in Crown Heights or Baruch Goldstein? Lowe’s fallen prey to this kind of thinking made clear whose its most prized customers are. And acting on the principals of solidarity that motivate Russell Simmons, this homeowning Jew is glad she bought her washer-dryer from Home Depot.