Cafepress Bias
Michelle Malkin notes that the Cafepress promotional e-mail sent out to shopkeepers today features Plamegate merchandise that is decidedly liberal. Being a shopkeeper, I got the e-mail this morning and I too was struck by the obvious tilt of the offerings. I found this odd because my memory indicated that while Cafepress likes to promote political products in its "circulars," it's usually even-handed in its offerings. So I went back on looked at the old ones.
I was wrong.
The 6/7/05 promotional e-mail featured these products, which was fairly even between the two sides.
Then the 7/26/05 e-mail was completely anti-Rove.
The 9/20/05 e-mail had both pro- and anti-Bush stickers (as well as conservative and liberal stickers not shown), but the top-most graphic featured two liberal stickers, instead of one liberal and one conservative sticker.
The 10/18/05 e-mail had one pro-Bush item and one pro-Harriet Miers item. The rest are anti-Bush, anti-Tom Delay, and anti-John Roberts. Oh, and if you could see the bottom that got cut off, you'd find three anti-Rove products.
Then we get to today's circular, which featured only products from the liberal side.
I thought Cafepress was a little less biased, but after examining the accumulated evidence, I guess I was mistaken. They're still a great company, but when appealing to a wide market, sometimes it's best not to be so blatant about your political leanings.
Given Bush’s current standing in the polls, and the fact that people he endorsed lost their elections, it makes sense that the majority of product is anti-Bush, anti-Rove, anti-Bush White House. If Bush was running at 80%, you’d see more products in his favor. But right now bashing Bush is good business.
Comment by Burton — 11/9/2005 @ 10:43 am
Polls show only that people disapprove of him for some reason or another. That doesn’t mean they wholly disapprove of him or that they would endorse the extreme and often vulgar sentiments expressed in these products. Go back and look at them again. These are things that would appeal not to a large audience, but to a much smaller very left-leaning group.
Now it may be that that smaller group is doing bang-up business for Cafepress and then it would make sense to push the products they like. If that’s the case, however, then the company should figure out how to target the demographic instead of broadcasting it to everyone on the listserv.
Comment by Dangerous Dan — 11/9/2005 @ 3:45 pm