April 21, 2011
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Advertisers boycott Wonkette over Trig Palin post
At least nine advertisers have announced plans to pull their ads from Wonkette after the political blog ran a post making fun of Sarah Palin’s son, Trig.
Wonkette’s Jack Stuef wrote an item Monday poking fun at a poem that had been posted by Team Sarah for Trig’s birthday, with the refrain “Oh little boy, what are you dreaming about?” Stuef cracked: “What’s he dreaming about? Nothing. He’s retarded.” Trig Palin has Down syndrome.
It took about 36 hours, as David Weigel noted at Slate, but the conservative blogosphere, led by Big Journalism editor-in-chief Dana Loesch and Big Government writer Derek Hunter, picked up on the post and used it to drive a campaign to pressure Wonkette’s advertisers to drop the site.
Advertisers began announcing their plans to stop advertising on Wonkette via Twitter. By Loesch’s count, so far the boycotters include Papa Johns, Huggies, the Vanguard Group, Holland America Cruises, Nordstrom, Bob Evans Farms, Reliant Energy, DealSwarm and Coldwell Banker.
As Brand Channel points out, such boycotts are complicated because most of Wonkette’s banner ads are served by an ad network, meaning different ads appear each time users refresh the page.
Wonkette editor Ken Layne told Weigel that he had placed Stuef on probation.
The post has since been updated with an apology from Stuef:
UPDATE: I regret this post and using the word “retarded” in a reference to Sarah Palin’s child. It’s not nice, and is not necessary, but I take responsibility for writing it. For those who came and are offended by this post: I’m sorry, of course. But I stand by my criticism of Sarah Palin using her child as a political prop.
Update: Wonkette has removed the offending post.
"We have decided to remove the post as requested by some people who have nothing to do with Sarah Palin, but who do have an interest in the cause of special needs children. We apologize for the poor comedic judgment," reads an editor's note.
The post has been replaced by the note and commenting has been disabled.
Burgess Everett contributed to this report.
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