Here’s Ellen DeGeneres pushing back [warning: autoplay video] on the “Million Moms” (it’s actually 40,000) who want to have her removed as JC Penney’s new spokesperson. Penney’s must have known that they’d get flack from some haters when they adopted an openly gay person to sell their stuff, so I assume this was a calculated move to get rid of their image as the place where old ladies go to shop for granny panties. But, even if hiring Ellen is a bit “edgy”, Penny’s is still a solid, middle-class, suburban brand — they weren’t going to do something that would cause a real upset, so it’s worth taking a look at how Ellen handled this.
I’m sure Ellen’s response was gamed out in advance when she was hired, so it’s interesting to note that both she and Penney’s are comfortable issuing a pretty solid fuck you to the haters. In other words, they’re betting that the Republican caucus goers who voted for a bigot last night are such a powerless and financially irrelevant minority that they can be insulted on national television.