It's always a touchy subject when you suggest you know how someone should "feel" about an issue. Emotions are, of course, not determined by the laws of reason.
Moreover, in making the argument I am about to make, I might be persuaded to take an entirely different view with a different protagonist.
Anyway, what I am talking about is that I just saw this article at Yahoo! News:
Microsoft Apologizes For Winehouse Tweet
It has been established that I am not on Twitter (and, hence, did not receive the "tweet" in question), but I was on Napster yesterday afternoon and they had a prominent graphic for their users to click to be directed to purchase the music of the recently deceased singer. It was obviously commercially motivated but I didn't consider it inappropriate or insensitively exploitative.
However, apparently, others did (keeping in mind the Microsoft "tweet" may have actually gone further. I don't know what it actually said, but I suppose I would have to concede that it is more aggressive marketing than the passive Napster graphic).
So today, we have a Microsoft "apology" where they say:
Apologies to everyone if our earlier Amy Winehouse 'download' tweet seemed purely commercially motivated.
Of course it was "commercially motivated"!! You're a corporation, that is what you do! And you know what, your "apology" is commercially motivated!! Some asshole in your Public Relations Department wrote it as damage control. That is it; it's not genuine contrition.
Anyways, I guess the point here is that despite what the US Supreme Court would lead us to believe, corporations are not people. They should NOT have the same rights and protections as people, nor should they necessarily be expected to show any human decency with regards to an artist's death.
The death of Ms. Winehouse is a commercial opportunity for these struggling music retailers and to expect them to not treat it as such is to personify them inappropriately.
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