Posted on 12/07/2014 5:13:45 PM PST by windcliff
A local public relations agency says it’s changing its name after an overnight firestorm on social media.
In a flurry of tweets and retweets that started late Saturday and continued into Sunday, people from across the nation and around the globe chastised Austin-based Strange Fruit Public Relations, which shares its name with a Billie Holiday song dealing with racism.
It is widely accepted that the song, based on a poem written in 1937 by Abel Meeropol, uses the term "strange fruit" as a metaphor for lynching victims hanging from trees.
This was one of the many tweets directed at the public relations agency, sent by @BlackGirlDanger: “You named your hospitality PR firm after a song about black people hanging from trees, @StrangeFruitPR? Really?”
(Excerpt) Read more at statesman.com ...
Hey I’m 58 too!!!
Suck fruit...
You started it....LOL
Banana smugglers
Too bad. Strange Fruit and Austin is a match.
Change it to Darrell Wilson George Zimmerman, Inc. Racists want to lynch them too.
Liberals are the perpetually offended.
They see racism and lynchings everywhere.
No kidding.
PR firms, at their most basic function, are supposed to be able to create favorable views of a company - and naturally, avoid bad publicity.
Regardless of your opinion of the name, they should have known they were courting controversy.
Now, explain this name to me, it’s a construction company (it’s real, I googled it) and it’s pretty big and it’s name is: Cuntis, Inc.
_____________
Mr Cuntis named his company after himself,
That's a queer observation. If I heard the term, I'd just think it was some sort of left wing perv shorthand and go about my business.
I would have guessed that they changed it because they didn’t want to be identified as a “queer” PR firm.
Only from people who seek to stoke up controversy.
Austin is the liberal cesspool of Texas but you know, by themselves the words are scarcely any more controversial than Illegal Pete’s
But you want that changed, too. If we have to cater to people who take offense, we’ll live in a pretty bland world.
The PC police are the killjoys of life.
Hook’m Horns.... a simple-minded mistake in a hypersensitive town....
how long has that company been around anyways
***and read the internet everyday, especially FR. Never heard the term before***
I had a comment deleted on FR several years ago when I mentioned “strange fruit” hanging from trees and lamp posts.
Now I write this...”In the olden days if this had happened, a part of the city would burn down and (comment removed before the mods see it), but then it would be safe to walk the streets again for years.”
Isn’t that politically correct?
Insert a mango fruit joke here somewhere.
Part of the regiment of colon commandos of fhe brown eyed battalion.
When our mods are scared to death of being accused of being racist, you know the perpetually offended have already won.
Strange fruit strikes me as a name for exotic fruit. I’m not particularly thinking of lynching blacks and I doubt the folks running the Austin PR firm had that in mind.
Its like Alice being in Wonderland.
Feller made it through gradescchool with a moniker like that , might just as well keep it.
They couldn’t mean Peyote?
It’s a good description of Obama. Strange Fruit.
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