Rod Dreher

The Traditionalist Prince of Wales

Komen & The Cost of Free Money

By Rod Dreher • February 3, 2012, 2:30 PM

Look, the beauty of free speech is that, if you’re inclined to do so, you can write a check to PP in an act of solidarity, or write a check to Komen as an expression of moral approval. That’s all fine. But there’s something quite a bit different, something creepy and not a little despicable, about the Planned Parenthood set’s besmirching Komen’s good name across a thousand platforms for having the audacity to stop giving them free money. And I don’t care why that decision was made, frankly.

Imagine I volunteered to run a cub scout troop, and for years, when the annual soapbox derby came near, I knew I could count on Joe’s Deli as good for a hundred dollar donation. If one year Old Man Joe decided he didn’t want to donate any more — because he didn’t like the design of our racer, or because he thought his hundred bucks was better spent on a little league team, or because he disapproved of the scouts’ stance on gays — what on earth would justify me going on public access TV to grill Old Man Joe on why he hates kids? What would justify me hacking the Joe’s Deli web site or maliciously editing Old Man Joe’sWikipedia page? What would justify me goading a handful of my city councilman into standing up at the next town meeting and publicly calling on Old Man Joe to reinstate his donation?

Nothing, says Daniel Foster, would justify that. And he’s right, because his is the decent position to take.

76 Responses to Komen & The Cost of Free Money

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John M. says:

February 3, 2012 at 9:12 pm

Nonprofits of all kinds deal with this question constantly. At one point we had the “Tanqueray AIDS Ride” with gobs of money coming to HIV/AIDS organizations from the marketing department of the company that makes Tanqueray. It was sorely needed, but it also glossed over the fact that alcohol use plays a role in HIV transmission.

Some of this is that there simply isn’t enough money flowing into the nonprofit sector. The government contracts with nonprofits to deliver health and human services but doesn’t cover the whole cost, and it actually costs organizations more to take these contracts in terms of overhead, staff, benefits, etc. This means that the sector has to scramble and take money from sources seeking to scrub their image, like Tanqueray for example, or tobacco companies contributing to youth programs.

The money is never “free.” But nonprofits often don’t have a choice but to make that deal with the devil to serve their constituents and keep the doors open.
Siarlys Jenkins says:

February 3, 2012 at 9:35 pm

That site Erin linked to is an honest depiction, to the best of my informed non-specialist knowledge. It doesn’t look a bit like those cute, post-delivery, washed and clothed smiling babies on the billboards. In fact, it looks a bit like a cross between a tadpole, a human, and an alien. The last is just appearance. The first two are not surprising. I don’t think it has either a central nervous system of awareness of its own existence, and it is very much still part of the biological system (an adult woman) in which it is growing. Something to be careful about, but not murder to remove it either.
TTT says:

February 3, 2012 at 9:45 pm

Foster’s argument is cluelessly privileged and obtuse even by the standards of post-Jonah NR.

If a high school doesn’t teach Greek because it can’t afford to or no one wants to take it, fine. If it doesn’t teach Greek because someone threatened to blow up schools that teach Greek, that’s not fine. “Not caring why the decision was made” is an intellectual and moral failing, and saying it louder will not make it the least bit more admirable.
Monterey says:

February 3, 2012 at 10:05 pm

Here’s what Planned Parenthood founder and eugenics pusher Margaret Sanger had to say: (she of the opinion that something should be done to keep more black children from being born)

“I accepted an invitation to talk to the women’s branch of the Ku Klux Klan…I saw through the door dim figures parading with banners and illuminated crosses…I was escorted to the platform, was introduced, and began to speak…In the end, through simple illustrations I believed I had accomplished my purpose. A dozen invitations to speak to similar groups were proffered.” (Margaret Sanger: An Autobiography, P.366)

The truth that PP would rather you not know.
Ben, Okla. City says:

February 3, 2012 at 10:31 pm

Look on the bright side, everyone. We gotta helluva South Park episode on the way.
Mitchell Young says:

February 3, 2012 at 11:02 pm

I said a large proportion, not all, or even most, Siarlys.

So sure, virtual friends. Besides, from your comments, if I am not mistaken, you are more of a race-blind libertarian guy than a progressive. Progressives are the guys, like one ex-Wonkette minion, that can excoriate as racist anyone from the folks at NumbersUSA to teapartiers, and yet crack jokes about Michelle Malkin and ping pong balls.
Mitchell Young says:

February 3, 2012 at 11:09 pm

“A person can insult a man’s faith, call him an idiot over it, and try to marginalize what he believes if not outright try and make it criminal. but the moment you tell him he isn’t liked very much because of it, watch him sputter in shock and outrage”

Not quite sure what you mean, Dave. I mean, yes, we are social creatures, and so want to be liked — at least most of us. We want those dinner party invitations, the opportunity to speak at Yale (or the local community college). But ‘progressives’ go far beyond attempts at ostracism. Again I’ll use the Carrie Prejean example — a 20 year old girl *answers a question* honestly about gay marriage , and her opinion was the same as 52% of California’s voters, and yet she is hounded out of her job as Miss California (or whatever).
Erin Manning says:

February 3, 2012 at 11:27 pm

Shorter Siarlys here: “The 7.5 week embryo doesn’t look exactly human, and she probably can’t think for herself yet, either. So it’s fine to rip off those arms and legs, crush the head with a pair of forceps, and vacuum the bloody remains out of the mother’s uterus.”

At least you’re not (as far as I know, Siarlys) a vegetarian, because the irony of that would be far too much for me to handle.
hattio says:

February 3, 2012 at 11:38 pm

Was anyone else following Rod when he posted on the restaurant in the gay district of San Francisco that was being boycotted because of the owners contributions to Prop. 8? I seem to remember he called the owners laughably infantile for complaining that people who had voluntarily given the restaurant their business decided to discontinue giving the restaurant their business. He went on to comment how you could quit giving them your business for ANY reason or even NO reason, because, after all, it was the patrons money. Oh wait. No, he didn’t do that at all.
Ivan K says:

February 4, 2012 at 12:23 am

According to a 2010 fact sheet from their own website, Planned Parenthood provided 324, 008 abortion services, 2,405 adoption referrals, and 9,433 prenatal services in 2008. Abortion services accounted for 96% of the services provided to pregnant women. No doubt, every one of those 324,008 babies was treated like medical waste.
Monterey says:

February 4, 2012 at 3:32 am

PP is rather like the Eagles’ infamous Hotel California: You can check in any time you like, but you can never leave….
Greg Panfile says:

February 4, 2012 at 6:39 am

And what about a bit of a consistency check here? One constantly reads at the NR about what they call being ‘pro-life’ and also how we should uncritically support Israel. How about this, from Wikipedia:

‘According to the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics report from 2004, 19,500 legal abortions were performed in Israel in 2003, while 200 requests for abortion were denied. Most abortions were authorized because the woman was unmarried (42%), because of illegal circumstances (11%), health risks to the woman (about 20%), age of the woman (11%) and fetal birth defects (about 17%).[2]‘

How is funding that country different from funding Planned Parenthood? What is Santorum’s position on this? Or that of the NR staff?

Crickets…
Public Defender says:

February 4, 2012 at 7:11 am

Here’s what’s wrong with Dreher’s theory that it’s OK to boycott a charity when you disapprove of someone it funds, but not when you disapprove of a decision not to fund someone. Every smart charity that gives money has criteria for spending that money. Some of the criteria will be affirmative (“we will fund X”), some will be negative (“we will not fund Y”).

Under the Dreher Theory of Charitable Giving, people deciding whether to give to that charity can only consider its affirmative funding rules when deciding whether to give. That’s absurd.
JustMe says:

February 4, 2012 at 9:34 am

I get the impression that something happened where the Komen foundation was told to put movement conservatives on the payroll in order to turn SGK into a front group for right wing interests in exchange for more donations. There’s really no other explanation for bringing on Ari Fleischer to do a talent scout for an executive vice president who was eventually selected as a failed Georgia gubernatorial candidate who made her bones opposing PP. Komen allowed themselves to be used for a political interest group’s agenda and suffered for it.

This is a classic mafia/machine politics scam– in exchange for support and muscle, you have to put their friends on the payroll and allow yourself to be used as a front group to push their agenda. The trade off is that you get a LOT of money– just look at groups like the Heritage Foundation and the like. But you can’t assume that there won’t be consequences to bringing in Bush administration officials and agreeing to allow yourself to be bankrolled by right wing rich guys.
John Morrison says:

February 4, 2012 at 9:35 am

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Surly says:

February 4, 2012 at 10:45 am

I have a problem with non-profit A deciding to fund non-profit B from the donations that people gave to A in good faith. Unless you are United Way, where it is understood that it’s a clearing organization, it seems misleading. If non-profit A has so much money sloshing around that they can give it away, maybe they should, you know, CUT BACK THEIR MARKETING BUDGET and use the savings for their internal operations.

I no longer donate to big, national charities and this is a good example of why.
David J. White says:

February 4, 2012 at 1:34 pm

Do not the customers of Old Man Joe, in other words the sources of his revenue, have the right to react to his decision by saying ‘I don’t like your decision, and as a result I’m not shopping at your deli anymore.” ?

So Old Man Joe’s customers who want to continue to support the Cub Scout troop can each contribute a small amount to the Scout troop, and soon they’ve made up the entire amount of Joe’s previous donation, or more.

Similarly, people who were ticked at Komen’s decision to stop giving money to PP could simiply make up the slack by giving money to PP.

But what really gets me about this whole incident is not so much that corporations made funding decisions, for whatever reason — corporations do that all the time, just as individuals and families do. What really gets me is the perceived need to make an announcement about it, and give some sort of reason.

I’m reminded of someone I used to know who got ticked off at me for some reason, and so decided to give me the cold shoulder. The problem was, she didn’t just ignore me, she felt that he had to ANNOUNCE to my FACE that she was IGNORING me, so that I would be sure to KNOW, unmistakably, that was she was IGNORING me, and WHY. She actually said to me at one point, “Do you see how I’ve been ignoring you?” I told her that she seemed to misunderstand the whole concept of “ignoring”.

As I said, corporations and individuals make funding/contribution decisions all the time. You want to stop giving money to XYZ? Fine, stop giving money to XYZ. What is the point of making a press conference to ANNOUNCE that you’re going to stop giving money to XYZ?

In the Joe’s Deli example, Joe stopped giving $100 to the Cub Scouts. He didn’t take out a full page ad in the paper announcing, “I AM NO LONGER GIVING $100 TO THE CUB SCOUTS!!!”.

There have been times in my life where I have stopped contribuing to various charities that I formerly supported. Mostly I made the decision for personal financial reasons. I didn’t see the need to hire a billboard to proclaim “I AM NO LONGER SUPPORTING ABC!!!”

So, the problem I have is not the individuals or corporations give money to one cause or another. As long as corporations do so in a way that is transparent, so that those who are interested can find out this information and incorporation that into their decision to continue to patronize that corporation, or not, that’s fine.

The problem is that these corporations want to be SEEN to be acting in a particular way, and are happy to take the positive consequences, but don’t want to have to deal with the negative consequences.
David J. White says:

February 4, 2012 at 1:36 pm

PP is rather like the Eagles’ infamous Hotel California: You can check in any time you like, but you can never leave….

I’ve seen the Catholic Church described that way, as well, and I rather like the analogy (and I’m a devout Catholic).

After all, how many people make a point of identifying themselves as “former Presbyterians” or “lapsed Methodists” or “recovering Congregationists”?
DavidT says:

February 4, 2012 at 4:33 pm

I wonder when someone on the Right is going to discover that tax cuts are “anti-life” because women can use the money they save to get abortions…
David J. White says:

February 4, 2012 at 4:38 pm

I should follow up my (perhaps excessively long) post above by saying that I have since read that it was PP, not Komen, that publicized Komen’s decision to stop funding PP. If that is the case, then my ire towards Komen on the publicity front was misplaced. But I think my larger point remains — and applies to the whole “ribbon” thing as well. The “ribbons” aren’t about being charitable: they’re about advertsiing how charitable (and thus how wonderful) you are, so that other people may applaud you.
Tom S says:

February 4, 2012 at 9:30 pm

Ivan K omits a few things from his statistical cherry-picking: according to planned parenthood’s 2010 Annual Report, abortions make up 3% of services that Planned Parenthood provides, as compared to STD testing (38%); cancer prevention/screening (14.5%); pregnancy tests and prenatal services (10.4%); and contraception (33.5%). This adds up to services provided to over 11 million people.

Imagine how many abortions there would be without Planned Parenthood (Hint: there would be many more).
David M says:

February 4, 2012 at 10:24 pm

Ivan, I think the truth is somewhere in between, as the same person could get contraception and a birth control test on the same visit, and have it count for both types of services.
Ivan K says:

February 4, 2012 at 10:56 pm

Tom S,

I’m not sure whether you are aware of this but only pregnant women can have abortions. 96% of PREGNANT WOMEN who go to PP end up getting abortions. Consequently, PP’s claim that it deals with pregnancy just like an ordinary ob/gyn center is false. I don’t know of any regular ob/gyn 96% of whose clients end up aborting. That’s not an ob/gyn center but an abortion mill. It’s common knowledge that PP is not even slightly interested in providing services to pregnant women who do not intend to have abortions. That’s not their raison d’etre. It would be far too life-affirming.
pentamom says:

February 4, 2012 at 10:57 pm

“Perhaps the needless death of wives, mothers, daughters and sisters – sacrificed on the altar of a political purity test – justifies a bit of outrage.”

Yeah, watch the body count mount up as a result of all those women having to call someone other than Planned Parenthood in order to be told to go somewhere else for a mammogram. You’ll hardly be able to step over the bodies with a vicious killing campaign like that going on.
Siarlys Jenkins says:

February 4, 2012 at 11:09 pm

Mitchell, I think you’ve described me with reasonable accuracy. Although I admire the memory of both “Fighting Bob” La Follette and Eugene V. Debs, I am definitely not sympathetic to anything that has been described as “progressive” in the past fifty years. The label appears to have been assumed by a pack of lemmings which has avoided running over a cliff by piling into a blind alley.

Erin Manning touches in her admirably direct style on the fundamental obstacle to achieving any substantial national consensus on abortion: what is growing in the womb either is or is not a person with fully protected rights equal to those of the woman in which it is growing. I wouldn’t call what is ripped arms, legs, or a head, although there are vague outlines of what will become all three in time, if the process is not interrupted. And how many centimeters is this 7.5 week fetus anyway? Blown up photos can give an exaggerated sense of what is removed.

True, I am not a vegetarian. Although a carnivore, I do not eat human embryos, and try to avoid bovine livers as well. Are you aware that some vegetarians think it is all right to cook and eat the placenta, after delivery of course, because it is “unkilled meat”? I’m not into that either.
Public Defender says:

February 5, 2012 at 4:49 am

These last few comments have hit the real issue that determines which protest against Komen (by the Right or the Left) was an appropriate use of a boycott. The real issue isn’t the method of protest. The real issue is the underlying merits. Do you believe it is right to try to marginalized abortion rights groups? Dreher admitted that Komen’s initial decision to cut ties with Planned Parenthood was part of an intentional effort by the Right to marginalize the abortion rights movement.

If you believe that effort is appropriate, you will find that the initial boycott of Komen by the Catholic Church and others was appropriate. If you support abortion rights, you will find that the counter boycott was appropriate.

A boycott is kind of like a gun. Guns aren’t inherently immoral or moral. They are tools. Tools can be used for good or for bad. With the Komen issue, we just disagree about which side is good and which side is bad.