P&G suit against Amway dismissed

I'm not surprised.

Everyone knows that the HillaryBeast is Satan.

If I remember correctly all based on P&G's "moon and stars" trademark

Does P&G really want a customer that's so gullible to belief this crap from Amway?

Amway peddlers can be as pesky as Jahova's Witnesses...

I think the Amway guys hide their affiliation now.

It'd be like the Jehovah's Witnesses coming to your door and saying, "Hi, I'm from the local archdiocese."

Claim: The president of Procter & Gamble announced on a popular talk show that he donates a portion of the company's profits to the Church of Satan.

Status: False.

Example: [Collected on the Internet, 1998]

PLEASE MAKE A DIFFERENCE

The President of Procter & gamble appeared on the Phil Donahue Show on March 1, 1994. He announced that due to the openness of our society, he was coming out of the closet about his association with the church of Satan. He stated that a large portion of his profits from Procter & Gamble Products goes to support this satanic church. When asked by Donahue if stating this on t.v. would hurt his business, he replied, "THERE ARE NOT ENOUGH CHRISTIANS IN THE UNITED STATES TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE."

Origins: Let's
cut straight to the heart of it: Procter and Gamble's president is neither a Satanist nor does his company support the Church of Satan. What we have here is a rumor run amok. One that's been eluding the butterfly net since 1980, too.

The slander predates the supposed 1994 Donahue air date by 14 years. P&G's president has never been on Donahue (the show confirms this), nor did he say such a thing in any other forum. (Company presidents and CEOs just aren't good general talk show material and therefore are rarely invited to make appearances in such venues, something that should be kept in mind when examining the plausibility of this and similar wild tales about damning admissions supposedly made by corporate types on popular talk shows.)

Moreover, how the company directs its profits is a matter of public record, as it is for all publicly-traded companies. (Procter and Gamble is traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol PG.) Were P&G handing any portion of its profits to Satan, that would be readily apparent in its financial statements.

Those who accept the rumor as revealed truth point to P&G's "man in the moon" logo as proof of the company's ties to evil. They see in the curlicues of the moon man's beard an array of 6s and believe that by playing "connect the dots" with the thirteen stars in the logo, three 6's can be made to appear. (According to Revelation 13:18 666 is the "mark of the Beast", with the "beast" understood to be the devil.)

There is nothing sinister in the logo's design, let alone a hidden code that reveals the true intent of the company. P&G's "man in the moon" trademark was adopted in 1851, at a time when goods were more commonly marked with visual trademarks than with companies' names. (The ability to read was not as widespread then as it is now, so companies offering an array of consumer goods rather than just one product had strong reason to devise memorable pictoral logos for their wares.) The thirteen stars were an homage to the original thirteen colonies of the United States of America, and the man in the moon was simply a popular decorative device of the times. (Specific visual motifs often enjoy periods of enthusiastic commercial use and then sink into cultural obscurity. America in the early part of the 20th century was Egypt crazy, but few commercial designs other than the Camels cigarette pack remain to remind us of that fact.)

In July 1999, the dog and pony were trotted into the ring once again, with the claim about a CEO's admission that his company was donating a portion of their profits to the Church of Satan being amended to reference an incident that supposedly place on 1 March 1998 on the Sally Jesse Raphael Show. What makes this particular claim refutable is the date: 1 March 1998 was a Sunday, and the Sally Jesse Raphael Show show neither tapes nor airs on that day of the week. After this error was pointed out, whoever "fixes" these things altered the Sally Jesse version to change the day of the interview to 19 July 1999, a Monday. Same slander, just a different date. And still as specious as ever.

In response to all the inquiries about this claim, Sally Jesse Raphael added the following disclaimer to her FAQ:

Sally listens:
Rumor has it that the president of Procter and Gamble appeared on your show and said that he was associated with the Church of Satan. I would appreciate more information if you have any, perhaps a tape of the show if available. If this is a hoax, please let me know.

Sally Sez:
The rumor going around that the president of Procter and Gamble appeared on The Sally Show and announced he was a member of the church of Satan is not true. This a hoax that's been going around in one form or another for the past 20 years ... only originally, it concerned the Phil Donahue Show...then evolved to the Jenny Jones Show ... and now it's evolved to The Sally Show. The president of Procter and Gamble has NEVER appeared on The Sally Show...NEVER. Nor has any other person in authority at P&G. Any president of a multi-national corporation (including the head of P&G or Liz Claiborne) would be immediately fired by the board of directors if he or she did such a thing. Also, profits from any such corporation go to the stockholders ... not a church designated by the president. Do not send money in to get a transcript. We do not provide transcripts or video tapes of our shows to the public. Frankly, this thing has gotten out of hand. If we had this man on our show, and he had said what it's alleged he said, we would have scored a broadcasting scoop and would have trumpeted it to all the newspapers. It would have been to the show's advantage. But there was no scoop, and there were no headlines.
The e-mail's comment about "not enough Christians to make a difference" is meant to inflame readers to the point of boycotting P&G products. Of course that statement angries up the blood; that is its purpose. The statement is also woefully in error: three out of four adult Americans are Christian, and adult Americans are the target consumer group for P&G. The rumor is framed in such a way as to offend three-quarters of P&G's buying public and influence them into shunning P&G products in protest. Those whose first instinct is to react angrily to the "not enough Christians" comment should instead pause to reflect that their chains are deliberately being yanked by those who would prefer (for their own reasons) that people not buy from Procter and Gamble.

Although the origin of the P&G satanism rumor is unknown, Procter & Gamble has over the years initiated a number of lawsuits against Amway Corp. (now known as Alticor), a vendor of household products (many of which compete with Procter & Gamble's brands), charging it with fomenting the slander. P&G claims distributors for Amway revived the rumors in 1995 when a distributor recounted a version of the TV show rumor on the company's national voice mail system for distributors. P&G has successfully sued a number of individuals who spread the rumor -- some of whom have been Amway distributors -- but has yet to prove in court that Amway itself has been behind the resurgence of the Satanism claim. Amway insists it has not had a hand in furthering the rumor but has made attempts to combat it. The P&G/Amway battle has been fought in a number of courts at great cost to both companies. P&G has been closemouthed about its legal fees relating to the matter, but a 2001 Houston Chronicle article has Amway admitting to $30 million in legal bills.

The self-same "head of large company proclaims that company tithes Satanic causes" hoax has been kited about others. In 1990, designer Liz Claiborne was dogged by the widely-believed rumor that during a recent appearance on Oprah she admitted to donating 40% of the profits from her clothing company to support the Church of Satan. The rumor was wholly false (Liz Claiborne never even appeared on that Oprah's show), but that didn't stop the tale from spreading. Similarly, in 1977 the rumor mill had it that Ray Kroc of McDonald's also made the startling admission on a TV talk show that his company tithed the Church of Satan. Again, even though there was nothing to this bit of gossip, it was believed and acted upon -- not only did customers boycott the golden arches, but kids quit their McDonald's-sponsored Little League teams over the slander.

Barbara "devil's food" Mikkelson

Additional information:
Trademark Facts
(Procter and Gamble)
Phil Donahue, Sally Jesse Raphael, and Jenny Jones Talk Show Denials
(Procter and Gamble)

Last updated: 12 January 2003

P&G wants you to buy Tide.

(Lean back in your chair. Close your eyes. Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out. Repeat after me: Buy Tide, Buy Tide, Buy Tide, By Tied, Tie Dyed, Ty Died.)

The P&G/satanism urban legend has been around a lot longer than 1998. I remember a family member solemnly telling me that buying P&G products was supporting the devil 30 years before that.

The P&G/Amway battle has been fought in a number of courts at great cost to both companies. P&G has been closemouthed about its legal fees relating to the matter, but a 2001 Houston Chronicle article has Amway admitting to $30 million in legal bills.

For that kind of money, I'm laying odds that the 2 company's lawyers got together and started the rumor.

While I was in college, I worked for P&G at the ITC products research division in Cincy.

There was this tough old district manager who drove around in an old beat up rambler....an Ebeneezer Scrooge type.

If you ever saw him chew butt, you'd know where the Satan lives at P&G rumor came from.

The last person that got me to waste any time about Amway claimed they were with "Quixtar" or some such nonsense.

The next person that tries such a sales pitch on me is getting a trip to knuckle junction.

been around a lot longer than 1998

yeah...but we had to wait for Al Gore to invent the Internet to REALLY get the rumor going.

(I vaguely remember stories from jr. high....many years ago...about the connection)

Quixtar was started by Amway several years ago.

Hasn't this been going on for what seems like decades?

I remember cruising up into Baltimore's Inner Harbor for "Sunny Sundays" back in 1973 or 74. We were passing the Proctor and Gamble plant (they had a big sign facing the water), and my friend told me that P&G was run by Devil worshippers.

I was about 10 at the time, so I don't have any recollection of the rumor before then.

Hi, I'm from the mormon church and we've gotten into a new line of household products that'll clean your shirts as well as your soul.

BTW, do you know that old hymn, "Heaven is an M-L-M?"

Yeah, I finally got him to admit that, but he didn't want to.

I know they do Duncan Hines, and they have a mean Devil's Food Cake.

Could that be it?

There was this tough old district manager who drove around in an old beat up rambler....an Ebeneezer Scrooge type. If you ever saw him chew butt, you'd know where the Satan lives at P&G rumor came from.

Yeah, the horns and tail don't hide well under a business suit ;)

Sounds like my first comm chief when I was in the Navy. I remember him gigging me during a personnel inspection held AFTER a 12-hour watch because the crease in my dungaree shirt had bent.

I worked for Amway several years ago (the company, not the distributor network). One morning while walking near the auditorium during a gathering of new Direct Distributors, I heard them singing in a round the words "Don't watch TV! Go out and sell The Plan!" Creepy.

Crease in the shirt. LOL.

I told ya that ya shoulda joined the army.