The Foolish Boycott of Oreos

When the time is right to stand up for what you believe, actions are a powerful tool to communicate this. In history, we have seen this through examples like Rosa Parks refusing to sit in the back of the bus and students sitting down at a lunch counter to enjoy a hot meal like people tend to do in the afternoon.

There are times, however, when such action is more than a little bit silly and in some ways show off hypocrisy. I am specifically referring to the response that a great number of people had when the Nabisco company posted a photo on their Oreo cookie fan page that showed multiple layers of cream in a single Oreo cookie in a rainbow configuration with the word “Pride” underneath it, in honor of it being Gay Pride Month. (In the United States, this is the month of June, perhaps in honor of the Stonewall riots that took place in 1969 during that month.)

There was an immediate reaction, both negative and positive. Many people stated that they were quite happy that Nabisco was taking this stance while a great number of other people complained about it and stated explicitly that they were never going to buy another Oreo cookie again because of it. This is what I feel is a foolish boycott.

I would ask the boycotters to take a really hard look at their shopping lives and see where they are spending their money. If you have either an iOS or Android OS based phone, you will need to get rid of it because both Apple and Google are big supporters of gay pride.

Moreover, if you really want to boycott Oreos, you can’t stop there — it wasn’t Oreo that came up with the photo but the parent company of Kraft — you can see a list of all of the brands that Kraft produces here and start by throwing out a lot of food in your kitchen. Rest assured that many homeless shelters and soup kitchens would be happy to take your food.

I could go on and on about different companies to boycott but the point I am trying to reach is that you can’t say that you are going to boycott Oreo cookies because they are supportive of gay pride and then tweet about it on your iPhone.

Moreover, this kind of boycott is almost always a lot of bark and not a lot of bite, if you will excuse the expression. What I mean by this is that I bet that out of all of the people who said that they wouldn’t eat any more Oreos, many of them were saying it out of upset at the time and have since then gone on to eat Oreos again. By this time next year, people will be eating Oreos just as they always have.