July 7, 2014

"I’m not in your bedroom... Obama’s in your bedroom."

Said Michael Potter, founder and CEO of Eden Foods, straining to try to stave off the bad press and threats of boycott in a phone call with a Salon reporter (Irin Carmon) who had reported on his company's Hobby Lobby-type lawsuit about contraception coverage.
Did he worry about the impact on his bottom line? “Oh my god,” he said, “from what we’ve seen the last couple of days, it’s a big deal.”

But he isn’t prepared to back off. “I worked my ass off at figuring out what to do on it. I worked hard on it and I made a decision,” he said. “The federal government has no right to do what they’ve done. No constitutional right, no standing.” Apparently, his apology only goes so far.
That "apology" business refers to the fact that Potter began the phone call with an apology for not responding to Carmon's request for a comment when she was working on the first article — "Organic Eden Foods’ quiet right-wing agenda/A crunchy, natural food company marketed to liberals discreetly sues to stop covering employees' contraception."

If your business is all about massaging minds with concepts like "organic" and the notion that good old cow's milk should give way to something milked from a bean, you need to know your customers. These are folks with manipulable minds... womanipulable minds.

40 comments:

Michael K said...

Most of these boycotts are by people who don't use the product or store anyway.

Humperdink said...

Obama, the great uniter, strikes again.

Bill Crawford said...

Can someone explain to me how conservative political thought leads to being anti-contraceptive? Eden Foods position is based on an understanding of Roman Catholic dogma.

Last I heard, most Catholics were Democrats.

Evangelical Christians are the folks associated with the Republicans, and they do not oppose most forms of contraception.

Renee said...

Years/decades ago lefties....were against hormonal control. The issue is the left is more concerned for its corporate sponsors and not progressivism.

YoungHegelian said...

Why would anyone be surprised that a company that sells organic products might have a problem, religious in origin or not, with biochemical means of birth control? If someone thinks it's wrong to feed hormones to cows & chickens, they probably think it's wrong to feed them to women, too.

It really is amazing how Stalinist the "moderate" left has become in wanting everyone to follow the party line, and how they so actively work to punish deviancy, even on deeply personal questions of morality. Just like in the 1930's, when the US Communist Party sought to enforce party discipline on its fellow travelers, this will end in disaster for the Left.

The Crack Emcee said...

"These are folks with manipulable minds... womanipulable minds."

Whoa,...

Nonapod said...

Evidently there's a strong correlation between usage of the morning after pill (or at least the support of its usage) and a preference for organic food (or at least products with "organic" written on a label somewhere). If you're going to sell your snake oils and tonics to the rubes you have to have to tacitly support whatever they support, or at least pretend to support it.

Ron said...

You mean even liberals with convictions that contradict the POTUS should be silent also?

Does disagreeing with the President automatically make you 'right-wing'? Sad...

Saint Croix said...

Weird how the privacy rhetoric seems to veer into anti-sex rhetoric. "I'm not in your bedroom!" Like it's the worst thing in the world to be in a woman's bedroom.

This is like one of those screwball comedies where Cary Grant is hiding in the closet. "I'm not in the bedroom. Michael Potter's in the bedroom." And Michael Potter hides in the closet, too. "I'm not in the bedroom, that's Obama in the bedroom."

Saint Croix said...

And it's organic food! Your company is all up in her body.

Yeah yeah, you're in her digestive tract, working through the stomach and the intestines, I think maybe the bladder too, I'm not really up on this part of the woman's body, heading for the bowels, you're coming out the bowels now, your product is shit, it's officially shit.

"Yes, we focus more on the kitchen, the dining room, and the bathroom. We are not really a bedroom product at all."

Anonymous said...

Eden Foods.

Where would we be if there had been birth control in Eden?

YoungHegelian said...

By the way, could the Left please stop repeating the nonsense about how the "morning after" pills work?

Here's the link for Plan B from WebMD:

Plan B One-Step works like other birth control pills to prevent pregnancy. The drug acts primarily by stopping the release of an egg from the ovary. It may prevent a sperm from fertilizing the egg.

If fertilization does occur, Plan B One-Step may prevent a fertilized egg from attaching to the womb. If a fertilized egg is implanted prior to taking Plan B One-Step, the drug will not work and pregnancy proceeds normally.


Notice the weaselly use of the word "may"? Meaning, either they really don't know how the drug works, or, it's a subjunctive sense used to describe an "If A then B, if B then C" causal chain. Either way, it's unclear & bad English.

Now, think this through: if a morning after pill works only by preventing ovulation, if the woman has already ovulated & has sex, she's got a normal, natural chance of getting pregnant. It seems to me this makes "morning after" pills singularly useless as BC, since it leaves too wide a gap in protection. But, of course, this isn't so. The pills also prevent implantation of the fertilized ovum, just like they say at WebMD. It's the only way that the drug can cover the necessary bases.

Skeptical Voter said...

Oh lordy Ms. Althouse. I've got a 43 year old daughter who I love dearly. She was an ardent women's libber as a child--but raised a fit when her mother went back into the workforce when she was 14 (older sister could drive both of them to school). But women's libber or not, her "Mom" was supposed to be home when she got home from school.

She went on to UCLA and to a subsequent MBA. She's very bright, and does management consulting for a large internationally based consulting firm. She and her husband waited to have a child--but managed to do that recently. (Those delays in deciding to have children do complicate the process).

In any event, while she's very bright, she's also a "single issue" voter. Abortion rights uber alles as it were.

Naturally this bright human being fell for the garbage that Obama sells.

So your line about "womanipulable minds" struck home.

The world is a complicated place with lots of different issues--and it strikes me that the Sandra Fluke agenda is relatively small potatoes in the great scheme of things.

Renee said...

I live in Massachusetts. I'm liberal in social spending on the poor, sympathetic to immigration, anti-death penalty, and pro-environment.

But pro-life/family


I go to NARALs website and see who has the lowest rating regardless of party when voting.

traditionalguy said...

There is great inherent political power in who chooses of life or death to a man's children. Express that any way you want, and it remains an uber alles power...the body owner has the power.

n.n said...

So, the working narrative is that contraception == abortion, which is why "persons" and individuals who oppose the latter, necessarily oppose the former. There is a significant difference between prevention and termination.

YoungHegelian:

It's a probabilistic "may". They are only capable of estimating its actual effects.

Renee said...

It isn't just abortion, but that hormonal contraception alters female sexuality beyond recognition. http://thechart.blogs.cnn.com/2012/04/05/birth-control-may-affect-long-term-relationships/

Anonymous said...

Silly Eden CEO. Artificial hormone therapy is absolutely verboten for cows, but absolutely holy for women.

CatherineM said...

Salon is the worst. It seems a site that only has poorly written essays of fake outrage.

rhhardin said...

Moo swings.

rhhardin said...

Organic seems to be related to orgy, etymologically.

Primarily it's the musical instrument.

Gould with an organic Art of the Fugue, a favorite LP when I was a kid.

Also I propose the time division : pregnant, gnant and postgnant.

tim maguire said...

He's in the belly of the beast. His chosen field is catering to the kind of people who will shout down a speaker they don't like, destroy the property of people they don't like, stuff the ballot boxes for the candidates they like. They will happily crucify the heretic for insufficient piety.

I wish him luck, he has a right to enjoy the eating habits of people on a different part of the political spectrum from him, he has a right to try to build a business on something he believes in. Fortunately, the people he caters to are not so bright and will try to burn some other heretic before too long.

jr565 said...

Why did Obama lie to pro lifers by telling them they could support the law because he wouldn't require them to pay for abortifacients as part of the law?

jr565 said...

How many people from Eden foods are protesting that the can't get contraception. If they don't like it they can find a different job, no? SHould'nt THEY be the ones making the argument and not people who by the product? Its not as if women who don't work at Eden Foods are impacted by women at Eden Foods not being able to get the morning after pill. What if Eden Foods pay enough where women workers would rather keep their job than argue over the 70 bucks they would have to pay at CVS if they wanted a morning after pill?
If liberals want to play this game pro lifers should boycott any company that DOES pay for abortifacients.
This is why Obama shouldn't have added this to the law in the first place, and been truthful with pro lifers when he asked them to support his law on the grounds that they wouldn't be burdened having to pay for abortifacients.

jr565 said...

Would congress have passed the Affordable Care Act if they knew that key provisions would fly in the face of The RFRA?
There's a reason why even Hillary Care had exceptions for religious reasons when it came to aborifacients (which were broader than the current rules). Was Hillary engaging in a war on women.
Maybe, just maybe, the idea that corps MUST pay for abortifacients is the extreme position.
At any rate the Supreme Court ruled, you lost Obama suffered yet another set back. Nyah-nyah.
You made us accept gay marriage on the grounds that the court spoke.
Well the court spoke. You have to pay to get your abortion pills. Suck it up.

Steve M. Galbraith said...

President Obama thinks the contraception mandate is so important, so vital, that he campaigned endlessly on the policy. From coast to coast, town meeting after town meeting.

Well, no, he actually let the nameless bureaucrats in HHS create it. He didn't seek it in the ACA.

Those darn details.

jr565 said...

Young Hegelian wrote:
Why would anyone be surprised that a company that sells organic products might have a problem, religious in origin or not, with biochemical means of birth control? If someone thinks it's wrong to feed hormones to cows & chickens, they probably think it's wrong to feed them to women, too.


Hey good point. A lot of my friends want to ban GMO foods or only eat meat that is grass fed. But have no problems saying we should pay for pumping people full of hormones to "change their sex" because they feel like they're the wrong sex.A lot of women got cancer because they were given estrogen therapy. I can't imagine having people take nough estrogen to make them grow breasts would be a good thing. Contraditory?

m stone said...

Great link, Renee. Kerner at CNN makes some powerful connections.

Some people will go further to say that sex before or out of marriage affects a marriage relationship.

I think they call them "science deniers" too.

ALP said...

I keep hoping for an issue so annoying, so headache-inducing, it will finally help me get over my mild addiction to the internet - the inordinate amount of time I spend reading the same kind of shit over and over.

This Hobby Lobby/birth control just issue might do it. Please, keep these posts about dumb-ass feminist outrage coming. Keep reminding me of how disappointed I am by what passes for female "empowerment" these days...

jr565 said...

This was actually an issue back when the law was being passed? Doesn't anybody remember the catholics getting all pissed off that they were going to be forced to pay for abortifacients? Obama didn't have to make the paying for abortifacients mandatory. But he did. Most likely to tweak the nose of people he despises.

At the time Kathleen Sebelius said the decisions were made "after very careful consideration, including the important concerns some have raised about religious liberty. I believe this proposal strikes the appropriate balance between respecting religious freedom and increasing access to important preventive services."

So lets talk about the balance. Are women denied access to birth control or morning after pills if their employers don't pay for it? No. Women can still make their own choices about whether to use contraception or abortifacients. In the case of Hobby Lobby, there wasn't even an issue with the contraceptions.
Weigh that against churches and organizations being forced by govt to fund what they consider the taking of lives, which they abhor.
IT's quite clear that the only reason govt would force religious orgs to pay for abortifacients is punitive.

Michael K said...

"Last I heard, most Catholics were Democrats. "

That was before. Now most churchgoing people are Republicans. Except priests, of course.

southcentralpa said...

First, don't forget the people who can't process cow milk.

Second, as a fairly conservative who spends a fair amount of time in health food stores, I think the phrase you're looking for is "the kind of person who checks the kitchen staff for leather before agreeing to be seated at a vegetarian restaurant.

(For more ribbing of vegetarians, search for a Almost Live! sketch called Veggie Kill...)

Jason said...

rhhardin: Glenn Gould! The greatest sing-along-artist of all time!

Gahrie said...

These are folks with manipulable minds... womanipulable minds.

In other words, minds clouded by irrational emotionalism unable to make rational, reasoned decisions.

Repeal the 19th Amendment

tim in vermont said...

"I keep hoping for an issue so annoying, so headache-inducing, it will finally help me get over my mild addiction to the internet - the inordinate amount of time I spend reading the same kind of shit over and over."

No kidding!

jr565 said...

Tim in Vermont wrote:
"I keep hoping for an issue so annoying, so headache-inducing, it will finally help me get over my mild addiction to the internet - the inordinate amount of time I spend reading the same kind of shit over and over."

No kidding!

its because one side of the debate are petulant children who turn every minor event into the a Nuremberg trials. Every episode they immediately go to 11. Its always war on women, war on gays, war on blacks.
This latest round its like the end of women's rights as we know them because a woman's has to got cvs and buy a frisking morning after pill. Which costs 7pm bucks. And the agitprop kids go on twitter and say people who agree should be raped. Or strangle puppies. Its so obnoxious!

Largo said...

Because a thrill's a thrill...

Mark said...

Yes, Jr, the other side is exactly like petulant children at the Nuremberg trials tweeting about strangling puppies.

Exactly like that. And the conservative side never tells exaggerating lies and they never resort to personal attacks or demonizing the other side.

Thank you for being such a hilarious example of hypocrisy.

SGT Ted said...

And the conservative side never tells exaggerating lies and they never resort to personal attacks or demonizing the other side...

The reason the lefties are so mock-able that way is because they are especially known for their self proclaimed "tolerance" and "enlightened" thinking, but when their ox is gored, are revealed as just another pack of intolerant assholes, more akin to Fred Phelps than any sort of actual liberals.

Mark said...

Keep telling yourself that.