Dear High Fashion Cosmetics Manufacturers:
I want you to know that I am a conservative woman who shares something in common with your millions of treasured liberal female consumers: the need for a quality skin-care regimen. Perhaps this comes as a shock to you, but conservative women also suffer chapped lips, rough elbows, undereye circles, and ragged cuticles. (I speak with Absolute Authority on this.) The quest for a good moisturizer transcends partisan politics. Our money is green, like everyone else's. Oh, and we have feelings, too.
So when corporate boneheads in your industry (such as the ones at MAC Cosmetics) hire left-wing celebrities (such as offend-a-holic Sandra Bernhard) to hawk lip-plumping products by hurling epithets at us (such as "little freaked out, intimidated, frightened, right-wing Republican thin-lipped bitch"), we are not just going to roll over like tubes of mascara across a make-up counter.
There was a time when you could get away with snubbing us so gratuitiously — a time before the Internet and the blogosphere and YouTube existed. No more. When the gals at The Cotillion (cotillion.mu.nu), a consortium of conservative women bloggers, organized an online protest against MAC's anti-Republican advertising mockery, the company realized a simple truth: Politcizing beauty potions may be good for a few snickers in the boardroom — but it's plain bad business in Middle America.
There's more, including how supposedly conservative corporate America is much more averse to offending Muslims than it is about insulting conservatives.
