Posted on 03/15/2014 8:34:48 AM PDT by raccoonradio
The fight over Southies St. Patricks Day Parade got frosty yesterday, with Boston Beer Co. pulling its longtime sponsorship from the parade over the organizers refusal to let gay veterans march and one Southie bar fighting back with a vow to boycott the brew.
Sam Adams doesnt support South Boston. They dont want to support veterans like my father and uncle, so they can go sell their beer elsewhere, said Tommy Flaherty Jr., a lifelong Southie resident whose father and uncle own the landmark Cornerstone Pub & Restaurant on West Broadway.
Flaherty Jr. said he and his father, Thomas Flaherty Sr., 70, and his uncle John Flaherty, 81, were taken aback when they learned yesterday afternoon from reading bostonherald.com that the brewing behemoth pulled its sponsorship, so they decided not to sell Sam Adams indefinitely.
(Boston Beer Co. has) no problem taking the money from the people drinking at the bars along the parade route, Flaherty Jr. said, adding he has no qualms with gay people. We serve to everybody. I dont have a problem with gay people, nor do my father and uncle.
Boston Beer Co. could not be reached last night for comment on Cornerstones boycott. Representatives of the beer company until yesterday listed as a proud sponsor on the parades website have marched in past years, but announced yesterday morning they will not participate this year because the organizer, Allied Veterans War Council, is refusing to change its longtime policy of banning anyone from marching under a gay-rights banner.
We have been participating in the South Boston St. Patricks Day Parade for nearly a decade, Boston Beer Co. said in a statement. We were hopeful that both sides of this issue would be able to come to an agreement that would allow everyone, regardless of orientation, to participate in the parade. But given the current status of the negotiations, we realize this may not be possible.
The flap came after other supporters, including Westin Hotels and Gillette, distanced themselves from the parade. Yesterday, the parades website which had featured dozens of business backers erased its sponsorship page and replaced it with a message saying, Were updating our sponsors, thank you for your patience.
Mayor Martin J. Walsh said last night he was still hopeful a deal can be made.
Weve gotten pretty close to an agreement here, and I think a lot of people thought this was the year we were going to have an agreement, Walsh said. Im not giving up on that hope, we still have some time left. ... I have a glimmer of hope that were going to be able to work something out.
As for Boston Beer Co. pulling its sponsorship, the mayor said, They made a policy decision there, and I commend them for it.
I have always enjoyed creative freedom at FR.
Hint - its the vulgarity
I saw it. All is good, FRiend.
Yuengling Lager
Everybody should go into the bar, order Sam Adams, and when told they don’t have it...leave.
Yeah, well I do work blue from time to time
They want another public forum to shove their sexuality down peoples throat....Or something else.
or as the piece of doggerel Howie Carr has quoted, Did you hear about Foley, the Irish queer? Reached for a woman instead of a beer.
Sam Adams is going to pull a Cracker Barrel!
“Everybody should go into the bar, order Sam Adams, and when told they dont have it...leave.”
So you support the queer addenda? Sam Adams does.
They dont want to support veterans like my father and uncle,..He had a queer father AND A QUEER UNCLE? How the Hell does that family continue?
The Left was allowed to take over the media and the educational system. That was all they needed. They controlled the message. They pick the groups that are "oppressed". They beat you over the head with it. Your children are stuck in classrooms with lefty teachers and corrupted textbooks and they learn the lessons the left wants to teach.
For that matter, what does St Patricks Day have to do with anything other than the organized groups honoring him? Most individuals involved in these groups understand who he was, when he lived, what he did.
Here’s E.B. White’s 1949 view of it. It might answer your question:
It’s from a long essay titled, “Here is New York”
I mention these merely to show that New York is peculiarly constructed to absorb almost anything that comes along (whether a thousand-foot liner out of the East or a twenty-thousand-man convention out of the West) without inflicting the event on its inhabitants; so that ever event is, in a sense, optional, and the inhabitant is in the happy position of being able to choose his spectacle and so conserve his soul. In most metropolises, small and large, the choice is often not with the individual at all. He is thrown to the Lions. The Lions are overwhelming; the event is unavoidable. A cornice falls, and it hits ever citizen on the head, every last man in town. I sometimes think the only event that hits every New Yorker on the head is the annual St. Patrick’s Day parade, which is fairly penetrating — the Irish are a hard race to tune out, and they have the police force right in the family.[ ]
I’ve had mt last Sam Adams swill.
*agenda
Exactly spot on.
Well, the parade isn't, but Sam Adams is. Who remembers the "Sex for Sam" scandal - the radio program that Sam Adams sponsored where people had sex in public places for Sam Adams?
A what if situation:
Westboro Baptist: We want to march in your Boston Gay Pride Parade
Parade organizer: We don’t want you in and there’s a 1997 Supreme Court decision that says we can’t.
Westboro Baptist: Outrageous! We’ll sue!
Parade organizer: You won’t have a case. Tell you what, you can march provided you don’t have any banners or signs.
Westboro Baptist: Really? Well in that case never mind.
We only march when we have banners and signs with us.
—
Sound familiar? It’s what happened with Mass Equality and this parade. And maybe in an above situation a bar can say,
“We will stop selling (XXX) beer because they pulled their support from the gay pride parade after the organizers wouldn’t allow WBC in.” And note WBC’s real purpose: a political message. If they’re told you can march just no banners or signs, it’s... “never mind”...
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