Bundyology - An Article about Terry Rakolta

The Economist (Newspaper):
Article about Terry Rakolta

Last update December 13, 1999

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Thanks a lot to Carolyn Crapo, StuartM and "Grail".

An Article from "The Economist", March 11, 1989

A new cultural arbiter

Mrs Terry Rakolta of Bloomfield Hills, a suburb of Detroit, has outdone Britain's Mrs Mary Whitehouse on her first try. With a single letter to each, Mrs Rakolta bullied for huge companies into withdrawing their sponsorship of a television programme she thought too lewd.

The programme she objected to, on Fox Television, a fledgling network owned by Mr Rupert Murdoch, is called "Married... with Children". It is a comedy about the family lif of the Bundys. Mr Al Bundy is a blue-collar sexist and the humour can get a little bawdy, although nothing that a Britisch audience would even notice. Mrs Rakolta objected to seeing a woman's bra coming off (from behind) and two men talking about homosexuality (she misunderstood, says Fox) while watching the show with her children. She wrote to all the sponsors of the series. Four, including Procter & Gamble and McDonald's, responded by dropping their commercials. Procter & Gamble announced that it objected to the Bundys as a "negative portrayal of the American family". Coca-Cola's president wrote a personal apology to Mrs Rakolta and said that his company would review the series programme-by-programme.

There is nothing new in advertisers steering clear of controversial programmes. Last year an episode of the notoriously sensationalist chat show "Geraldo" about satanism drew huge audiences but almost no advertisers. What is new is that advertisers should be so easily scared off a mildly tasteless sit-com. Mrs Rakolta's success with "Married... wich Children" has emboldened her to set up a watchdog group ["Americans for Responsible Television"] to alert more advertisers to her concerns.

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