Olive Garden joins the coalition of the silly:
Following a week of back and forth between CBS late night comic David Letterman and Sarah Palin over a crude joke he told about the Alaska Republican governor’s daughter, the Olive Garden restaurant says it is cancelling all of its scheduled ads on Letterman’s “Late Show” for the rest of the year.
In an email to a Letterman critic obtained by POLITICO, a spokeswoman for the Italian restaurant chain wrote that “there will be no more Olive Garden ads scheduled for ‘The Late Show’ with David Letterman in this year’s broadcast schedule,” citing the talk show host’s “inappropriate comments.”
This seems pretty stupid to me as a business decision. I doubt there are many on the left with a Malkinesque yen for boycotts or that many politically aware types on the left eat at Olive Garden anyway, but I this seems like a polarizing move that may alienate some consumers.
Update. If this is real, it may be the best PUMA blog ever.
Update. If it amuses you, here and here are the contact pages for Olive Garden. I’ve never eaten there, but I was curious to hear more of an explanation from them about this.
ninerdave
Oh noes! A shitty restaurant is going to boycott Letterman.
gex
Ha! Where will those effete liberals go for
really goodnot diarrhea inducing Italian food?The Other Steve
I do like their Zuppa Tuscana soup… with salad and breadsticks for lunch. It’s like $7 and not bad.
But yeah, in general their food sucks. We have an italian restaurant across the street from us which is much better.
IndieTarheel
Yeah, this has the impact of an announcement that the AMC Pacer would no longer be advertised on Letterman.
Napoleon
Well there is another reason not to eat at Olive Garden in addition to the fact I live in an area with a zillion Italians and more good Italian restaurants then a person can reasonable expect.
Does General Foods still own them?
John Hamilton Farr
Olive Garden sucks doggie dicks anyway. I’m just sayin…
JSC
I just emailed the Olive Garden and announced that, in light of their intention not to advertise on The David Letterman Show for the rest of the year, I intend not to eat at an Olive Garden for the rest of the year or until they resume advertising on the show, whichever is longer.
What’s good for the goose….
different church-lady
Fewer people will now be eating at a mediocre chain restaurant? All I can say is, “MORE TASTELESS JOKES, DAVE!!!”
Zuzu's Petals
Thanks for posting this. I’ve just let them know I won’t be patronizing them; of course, I haven’t in the past, but now I have even more reason not to.
I wonder if they regretted it once they noticed the 15-person turnout at the rally.
aimai
Well, I guess they wanted to get in on that exciting free publicty that Dunkin’ donuts got when it had to fire the noted jihadist Rachel Ray.
aimai
Bailey
So let me get this straight–Olive Garden, which is about the shittiest excuse for food to begin with–is kowtowing to a miniscule yet vocal audience that admittedly doesn’t watch the Letterman show to begin with and is pulling their advertising reach from a program that apparently does meet their demographics? Um…okay.
PS-I haven’t eaten at Olive Garden in at least 15 years when a friend of mine who waited tables there told me how her colleague used to go into the rest room and rub the breadsticks all over his penis. I never recovered from that image, but in this instance, I’m happy to pass it on.
alhutch
Good for Olive Garden for taking a stand. I think I’ll take one too and never eat there again (or stay @ a Hilton chain hotel):
Boycott nonsense
Idiots.
IndieTarheel
@DougJ: That blog is a riot. Somebody should get them all in an open area and hit ’em with some Thorazine.It’s like Michele Bachmann’s been giving training sessions or something.
JenJen
When one of my former coworkers told me the other day that Embassy Suites had canceled their advertising on Letterman in protest of the Palin nontroversy, I almost spit out my sandwich. A bunch of us who used to be hotel executives got quite a kick out of this kind of shameless self-promotion of one of Hilton’s worst products. Of course, our immediate and unanimous reaction was “Cancel their TV advertising? What TV advertising? Embassy is almost all print and collateral-based.
One of these days, I’m going to have one cocktail too many and come over here to dish about all the craziness that is The Hilton Hotel Corporation, I really am. I gave those shitheads the best years of my life, and I know where all the bodies are buried in that loony-bin. :-)
EDIT: Ahhh…. cancel their online ads on CBS. Big whoop, Hilton.
Legalize
I guess I’ll have to sign up for another 33 years of not eating at shitty “Italian” restaurants.
sstarr
John Cole didn’t switch from Right to Left. In fact, the Right became the Left (silly boycotts, odd protests with props, groupthink and tortured terminology) and the Left became the Right.
By the way, I saw this graphic on 538.com. Why does this graphic design look so familiar?
Singularity
Yes, Olive Garden sucks, but they are a huge advertiser, and I am sure that this is not pleasant news at Letterman’s production company. I intend to send an email to their customer complaint department explaining that I will not be eating at their restaurant as long as they choose not to advertise on Letterman. And if I see one Olive Garden ad on Conan O’Brien or Jay Leno’s new sucktastic show, it will confirm that this decision is not one of principle, since both of those guys made equivalent jokes in the past (Shannyn Moore explains).
It is important that everyone contacts Olive Garden to protest this decision, even if you’ve never eaten there and never will. Advertising dollars determine who gets a voice on television.
Mike G
For king-size stupid, this ‘controversy’ is right up there with the Rachel Ray “OMG Donut Jihad!” flap of several years ago.
Mojotron
I consider Olive Garden’s food closer to “mouth rape” than Dave’s comments.
Gabo
What the women of this country need is for Palin to bring the whole family out on Jerry Springer to set the record straight. I bet Levi Johnston has a few choice words for someone who would joke about forcibly impregnating an underage Palin.
What the women of this country need is more Palin. She’s just like Clinton, but godlier.
Palin/Limbaugh 2012!
JenJen
@Mike G:
Oh dear. The Great Jihadi-Scarf ‘Terror Chic’ Malkin-Conceived Donut Purge. I’d actually forgotten about that!
Mike in NC
In 2008, the local rag reported that readers voted “Best Italian Restaurant” in Myrtle Beach to be Olive Garden. Astonishing, given that there are lots of excellent actual Italian restuarants in the area, operated by folks who moved down from places like New Jersey and Long Island. Of course, many of these same people probably voted for Mark Sanford for governor, too.
HumboldtBlue
In my eagerness to take a stand with the injured Palin party, who, just because they are amazing people with the most amazing mother/grandmother/mayor/Governor/auntie/sister-in-law ever I am adding to the boycott in my own special way.
Until CBS fires that pig, Letterman, I am officially boycotting oxygen. Letterman, even though he’s a pig, still needs oxygen to breathe, and if oxygen won’t stop allowing him to do so, which in turns allows this mouth-raping pedophile to mouth rape little girls, I will no longer consume oxygen in any form or fashion.
Sometimes in life you have to take a stand, and taking a stand against a man who makes jokes for a living is just as important as changing the background color of your blog to show solidarity for people you’ll never meet and will never affect in your lifetime.
It’s a huge sacrifice, but one I’m willing to make so that my sisters, nieces, and other assorted and sundry female relatives will never be threatened with mouth rape by Letterman.
Just say no, just say no to oxygen.
OGLiberal
The Hillbuzz folks are a laugh freaking riot. Check this out:
Republicans, you really need to wake up. Sarah Palin is what the GOP needs, not the candidates the MSM and DNC want you to run, like Bobby Jindal, Charlie Crist, Mitt Romney, or John Huntsman. Those four men will go down in flames to Dr. Utopia in 2012. Sarah Palin will wipe the floor with the Dems and become our first female president……We’re centrists, Hillary Democrats who love this Guv. We will always have her back — and hope she fights every day as well as she did this morning on The Today Show. Go, Sarah, Go!”
Do these people even freaking realize that Clinton and Palin are as different as night and day politically? Centrist Dems, my arse. What a bunch of lunatics. Are their only requirements for presidential candidate a) has a vagina and b) says bad things about that evil negro who stole the WH from Hillary.
Wait a minute. Is what I just wrote sexist? O crap! The 17 remaining PUMAs are going to boycott me now!
Aqualad08
Whenever Uncle Fredo comes in to visit from the Old Country, we take the family to Olive Garden…
All you can eat pasta, salads, breadstick…Uncle Fredo tells me he loves it…
Then, after the meal, he takes me out back behind the dumpsters of Olive Garden and beats the everliving shit out of me, screaming, “You cheap bastard! I come all the way from the Old Country and you feed me this horse shit? You’re fuckin’ dead to me, Tony, fuckin’ dead!”
Olive Garden…a fucking joke…
Xanthippas
Have you been to one lately? I don’t know about where you are, but around these parts Olive Garden is the place people go when they want “fancy” Italian food, so they’re exactly the sort of morons who’d leap on board a Letterman boycott.
Bullsmith
I sent them a polite letter saying that while I didn’t like Letterman’s jokes, I didn’t like Palin dragging her 14 year old into the affair and I was pretty disgusted at the Olive Garden for getting involved.
David took low blows at Palin’s family, no doubt, but the fact is it was Sarah who brought up Willow’s name and associated her with the concept of statutory rape all so she could get in a nice big public war with Letterman. If she’d protected Willow’s privacy, nobody else would’ve even thought about the younger daughter. Nice parenting, that.
jibeaux
@Mojotron:
Winn with two n’s, that’s how win that was and you don’t even KNOW how win you are.
FlipYrWhig
I bet Levi Johnston has a few choice words for someone who would joke about forcibly impregnating an underage Palin.
Words like “trust me, bro, it ain’t worth it.”
Joshua Norton
189 different ways to serve Chef Boyardee. Olive Garden is the Taco Bell of pasta.
BDeevDad
Like I needed another reason to not eat there.
BDeevDad
Olive Garden is denying it.
Notorious P.A.T.
Haha! Look at the latest post on HillBuzz:
Yeah, right. These people believe in satire and snark. And I’m a Chinese jet pilot.
OGLiberal
“Nice parenting, that.”
Not to mention turning your unwed, pregnant, high school dropout daughter into the poster child for, well, unwed teenage pregnancy. Or giving her the green light to do the talk show circuit to talk about how great it is being a unwed teenage parent. Or having various family members carry around her infant child like a football at various campaign events, letting the child sweat under hot studio lights during all hours of the evening, exposing him to lord knows what kinds of germs and viruses.
Palin’s family is a walking (and dysfunctional) campaign ad…because she’s turned them into one. Then she gets angry when a late night host pokes fun at her and one of her kids (obviously, he was referring to Bristol). And she’s supposed to be some tough-as-nails Alaska lady?
PS – Larry Johnson and the No Quarter crew are all over the Letterman/Palin feud as well. Yet another bunch of Hillary fans who have transferred their loyalty and obsession over to Palin, Clinton’s polar opposite.
Bill E Pilgrim
@OGLiberal:
Imagine looking at that list of nut cases and thinking that the problem is that they’re men. And proposing Sarah Palin as the solution.
Right now, as far as the Republican party goes, nutcase lunacy is definitely gender-neutral.
It’s like the entire party visited that brain slug planet on a GOP interstellar cruise vacation.
jibeaux
@FlipYrWhig:
There is this comedian who has a bit about how guys could really use a “bro” hotline to save them from colossal stupidity. It had to do with him asking the hotel operator to connect him to Janeane Garofalo’s room, she was actually a recent girlfriend, and he was so drunk he couldn’t pronounce her name right, and the operator saying, “are you sure you want to make this call, bro?”.
If anyone remembers that guy’s name, tell me.
Cranky
Go check out HillBuzz. You will find one thing conspicuously missing from all of the posts and discussion threads over there. That would be any mention of Hillary Clinton. I found 1 post from the previous 3 weeks that was about Hillary and it had a grand total of 1 comment.
Like most of the Puma sites, they are false fronts for Republican dirty tricksters and/or Palin supporters.
HeartlandLiberal
My comments via their web form just now:
Olive Garden here in Bloomington has been our favorite for birthdays and holidays. We often will order take out so we can get multiple meals to eat over a couple of days at home. That tradition is over. Because of your cancellation of support for Dave Letterman over his jokes re: Sarah Palin, we absolutely will NOT be eating at Olive Garden again. There is no way you can justify supporting the rabid, hateful, handful protesting off-color jokes NO WORSE than also made by Jay Leno and others. Besides, Sarah Palin IS A JOKE! She and her family are nothing but a bunch of hypocritical, lying, ignorant, anti-American (Alaskan Independent Party) self-serving hillbillies, for whom conception before marriage is apparently a family tradition, and who never met a state law or regulation that would not ignore for patronage or getting a family member a job. And their in-laws deal illegal drugs. Olive Garden is history for us unless you rescind this stupid decision.
canuckistani
Is there anything we can do to hurt Olive Garden if we already boycott it for failing to meet edibility standards? Maybe going in, eating the breadsticks, drinking the water, clogging up the tables and then changing our minds and leaving for a better restaurant?
goblue72
Calling Olive Garden an Italian restaurant is an insult to Italians.
Its like calling Panda Express “Chinese” food. Or Taco Bell, “Mexican” food.
Its the culinary equivalent of Archie Bunker in blackface. Scratch that – even Archie learned his lesson.
Bill E Pilgrim
@BDeevDad: Now that’s hilarious.
Someone hallucinated the entire thing, like David Brooks and the salad bars at Applebees.
Bubblegum Tate
ZING!
I haven’t eaten at the Olive Garden since my college years, when a meal there was decidely upscale compared to our usual fare. It was our chain restaurant of choice because you could go there, order an entree, eat a meal’s worth of soup/salad/breadsticks, and take your entree home, thereby scoring two meals for the price of one. So obviously, the decision to go there was more a matter of economics than food quality.
clone12
I’m guessing that Olive Garden, like most other casual sit-downs, are getting hit pretty hard by this recession. So strategically speaking, it might not be a bad tactic to both cut ad cost and get some free notoriety at the same time.
The food there is decent, and I’ve eaten there multiple times. And my deepest sympathy to the staff there- if I find the 3 stereotypical Italian songs played the in background on continuous loop annoying, I can’t imagine just on grating it is on the people who work there.
Fecapult
I wonder what Olive Garden thinks of this then?
Tom Betz
The Stupid! It Buuurrrns!
Ash
Wait, I don’t understand the PUMAs in this case? Since Hillary basically hates their guts, have they co-opted the Palin’s fight for mediocrity and idiocy?
JenJen
O/T, but the Washington Post gave Dan Froomkin the boot.
Apparently, their reasoning is that his “White House Watch” blog has “run its course.” That being said, I think we all know they fired him because he’s good at what he does, and he’s a DFH, so don’t be surprised when Fred Hiatt hires Erick Erickson to continue the column.
Erick’s first “White House Watch” piece will probably be titled, “Where’s The Birth Certificate?”
The Centzon Totochtin
I think that by far the craziest PUMA blog is Hillaryis44- if you havent looked at that place recently, do so. It is like nothing has happened since the end of the primary, and all the posts have a crazed-mantra-ish quality to them. The only thing funnier than that are the pat-on-the back comments from all the fanboys and girls after each post.
Please visit, and enjoy!
The Centzon Totochtin
Notorious P.A.T.
Just so we’re all clear here: David Letterman did not, actually in the real world, statutorially rape anyone, right?
vince
as a Sicilian that knows his way around a kitchen, I’ve found Olive Garden’s food to be utter crap. Now I have yet another reason not to eat there.
GoodNewsForMcCain
Pretty much any time you offend someone these days, there’s some group that wants that person fired and blackballed from just about any future means for earning employment. It’s sad, really, but I’m always disappointed when others buy into that sentiment.
kuvasz
olive garden? give me a break the food prepartion areas in every one of those restaurants is god damned filthy. i would never eat there.
DougJ
You asked that like it mattered.
Bubblegum Tate
Holy shit, that HillBuzz thread is phenomenal. Their brand logo mock-ups with the word “sexist” thrown in are pure comedy gold.
Napoleon
@kuvasz:
Hey, watch it, my stepson works as a cook at one of them.
Bill E Pilgrim
@JenJen:
It’s a crying shame what’s happened to that newspaper. That’s depressing news. From the Politico piece:
Yes, get that Ombudsman out there fending off the Dittoheads, because the WAPO doesn’t have any really right wing columnists to balance that out, except for William Kristol, Robert Kagan, Michael Gerson, Charles Krauthammer, George Will….
Sigh.
Two of the leading Neocons, Bush’s ex-chief speechwriter, a FOX “News” “analyst”. and the unclassifiably right wing ethics-challenged George Will.
Among many, many others only somewhat less right wing. The weird part is that it’s actually a heavily Democratic town, and that’s their newspaper.
greynoldsct00
Their food blows anyway, who cares?
kth
Here’s a treasure trove of late-night Bristol Palin jokes, as much or more from Leno and Conan as the supposedly odious Maher and Letterman.
jibeaux
@JenJen:
Well, that’s annoying. The White House ALWAYS needs watching.
Notorious P.A.T.
Well, it says in the Constitution that the first amendment ends when someone gets offended. . .
What?
greynoldsct00
Even scarier, that was only last year…it just seems like several years with all that has gone on since then
Peter J
Since the Olive Garden is serving arugula, they decided to stop airing ads on Letterman based on a campaign by people who already are boycotting them.
Epic FAIL.
JGabriel
Some of the comments on that Politico piece are … well, see for yourself:
“Me as a consumer has a right”? WTF? Sarah Palin, is that you?
That may seem kind of generic until you click on it and see that IO’s avatar is a headshot of Obama with his front teeth blacked out. Get it? Obama’s a buck-toothed n…
Don’t quit your day job, IO.
Charming. Don’t worry, Golfcoast. When your health insurance company inevitably screws you over, the public option will be there for you too.
.
eric k
Given the demographics of the Olive Garden customer base I’m surprised they even advertise on Letterman in the first place.
JenJen
@Bill E Pilgrim: @jibeaux: I’m pretty bummed. Looking forward to seeing what Froomkin has to say about it; he’s not the kind of guy who keeps his mouth shut.
YellowJournalism
@The Other Steve:
Yeah, the Zuppa Toscana is the best thing on their menu. And the breadsticks are pretty good, too. The only things worth going there for. There’s some Zuppa Toscana copycat recipes out there on the web, but the one I made didn’t turn out. (Though to be fair, it was more cook error than recipe, I’m sure.)
When I was in high school, Olive Garden had just come to our area. It was pretty popular among the girls my age group because our location had hot waiters. It was like Hooters for teen girls. Shitty food; excellent wait staff.
JenJen
@JGabriel: I always smile when thinking that one of the consequences to the Dixie Chicks speaking out against the war was that a few years later, they’d sweep the Grammys with an album and song which was completely and unapologetically about wingnut freeper assholes. So, in that sense, I think the Chicks “won” at the end of the day.
Yay, Chicks!! :-D
Nylund
The arugula and dijon liberal types would never eat at Olive Garden anyway.
Its much more of a Bob “the wind done knocked over my grill'” Owens (aka Confederate Yankee) type restaurant.
I think just about everyone in this thread “boycotts” Olive Garden already (even if not entirely intentionally). I know I haven’t stepped foot in one in over 10 years. The “OG” is in no danger of losing my business because they never had it. Only morons eat at Olive Garden, and only morons would take such a boycott seriously, so I understand why they’d take a right wing threat seriously.
Heck, if Michelle and Jesse stopped taking the kids there every Saturday night, they’d probably go outta business. (They save the Applebee’s for Sunday).
JGabriel
@Fuck. Formatting is screwed up.
I hate WordPress, or at least the iteration in use here.
To clarify, here are the two badly formatted quotes redone:
“Me as a consumer has a right”? WTF? Sarah Palin, is that you?
Charming. Don’t worry, Golfcoast. When your health insurance company inevitably screws you over, the public option will be there for you too.
.
here4tehbeer
Good thing Cheetos isn’t a sponsor.
Talk about the ultimate wingnut boycott paradox.
JGabriel
JenJen:
Yeah, in my book they went from uninterestingly competent to compellingly angry. Good for them. Thanks, wingnuts!
.
JGabriel
By the way:
… really needs to be enshrined somewhere. That’s just gob-smackingly mind-boggling.
.
Cackalacka
As an individual of Italian descent, who (pre-DVR) was inundated by ethnic stereotypes from this chain’s marketing, it is impossible for me to hate that $hit-factory any more than I already do.
“Hospitaliano” and “When you’re here, you’re family” … Christ, I was having a great day and now I just want to punch some stranger in the neck.
OK, since the server went down and came back up, I can now post this worthless screed in position 66. I’ve cooled-off slightly. Allow me to ammend the word ‘stranger’ in paragraph above with anyone affiliated with that $hithole organization, up to, and including, Napolean’s kid.
Zuzu's Petals
@canuckistani:
Do what I did. Tell ’em you won’t be eating there in the future. One hundred percent truthful.
jake 4 that 1
@Bill E Pilgrim: It’s going to suck if (when?) the Washington Times is the last daily standing. But I’ll think of crap like this and laugh anyway.
Napoleon
@Nylund:
That is the best laugh I have had in a while.
canuckistani
They can always turn to generic cheez-flavoured corn snacks. Err, “snax”. But where is the substitute for Olive Garden?
scarshapedstar
Only tasteless suburbanites, i.e. Republicans, eat that shit. So Olive Garden is trying to suck up to them.
Open-and-shut case.
Allan
Never mind.
Olive Garden is denying the Politico story. An error on Politico? Impossible! /snark
Wes
The Olive Garden denies this.
So, the Pumas are celebrating the cancelling of an ad buy that does not yet exist. Brilliant!
Oh, and Politico WINS THE AFTERNOON!!!!!
Calouste
People mistakenly assume that “Hospitaliano” refers to the welcome you get at Olive Garden, not the place you have to go to after eating there.
John Cole
I’m trying to remember if I have ever eaten there. Do they give away tons of bread free? I had a girlfriend in college who was always dragging me to shitty restaurants like that and eating a ton of the bread. I usually just got hammered. They serve booze at Olive Garden? I might have been there then.
Alex Milstein
I was gonna tell Olive Garden that I would never eat there again. And then I realized I’ve never even eaten there once. If I want frozen microwaved Italian, I’ll take Lean Cuisine.
Also I looked at the responses on the PUMA website and found one comment that had me laughing. Seems ‘Flo’ went off on Letterman’s wife, calling her a slut for having a ‘bastard’ child.
I replied, reminding her that the very focus of her support – Sarah Palin – has a daughter who also has a bastard child, and asked Flo if that means Bristol is a slut, too. Which kind of goes against her castigating Letterman for saying mean things about Sarah’s girls.
BDeevDad
@John Cole:
give away tons of bread free – check
shitty restaurants – check
serve booze – check
Sounds like you’ve been there.
Ronzoni Rigatoni
Olive Garden is an Italian Restaurant?
Who knew?
CalD
Now, now. Olive Garden is just showing concern for the delicate sensibilities of their customers… So what if they’re not equally concerned with their health — or at least not concerned enough to stop poisoning them with sodium. While they’re still alive, The Olive Garden just wants them to be happy.
But I never liked frickin’ Letterman either. About mid-way through his second season as a talk show host (showing my age here) I realized every single joke the man tells is at someone else’s expense and I haven’t been able to watch him since. I frankly think he’s just mean and in all fairness, probably long overdue for a spanking. So to me this is a story with no good guys, just people behaving badly on both sides of the argument — kinda like Middle Eastern politics.