Is it time for Greenlight Capital to short stock of Sochi Olympic Sponsors ?

Hedge funds can probably make a killing by shorting stock of Sochi Olympic Sponsors

The marketing setbacks facing Coca-Cola's karmically-doomed sponsorship of the Sochi Olympics seem to be the tip of the iceberg.

Coca-Cola Removes Social Media Tool That Banned The Word "Gay" http://t.co/TDrExzVw4s #CheersToSochi @CocaCola pic.twitter.com/l0Z09hGYVT

— LGBT Civil Rights (@lgbtcivilrights) January 28, 2014

• RELATED : After LGBT Twitter Bombs, Is Sochi Olympics Social Media Marketing Dead ?

Last year, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg launched a highly-visible attack on super-sized sugary drinks, seeking to ban the sale of high-calorie drinks as a way to fight obesity and obesity-related maladies, like diabetes and heart disease. A court blocked Mayor Bloomberg's ban on large sugary-drinks, but Mayor Bloomberg's successor has vowed to fight to restore the ban. Efforts to improve its corporate image have also proved to be problematic for Coca-Cola after the corporation faced allegations that it was depleting ground water and contributing to pollution in India. Coca-Cola's role in creating water shortages in India have led some local authorities to suggest last week that they would take actions to demolish a Coca-Cola bottling plant in Uttar Pradesh.

Coca-Cola is still recovering from the shocking 2009 documentary exposé, The Coca-Cola Case, of its labour violations in Colombia, Guatemala, and Turkey.

Similarly, the damage that McDonald's is doing to its own reputation following it's own deadly silence on the violent Russian LGBT crackdown comes at a time when the world's largest hamburger chain is losing customer loyalty and is facing an embarrassing sales slump. "We've lost some of our customer relevance," CEO Don Thompson told Wall Street analysts during a conference call this week.

Separately, it's unclear how much the credit card issuer VISA stands to lose, if anything, from the recent spree of credit card fraud impacting several large American retailers.

Is it time for Greenlight Capital to create a bespoke basket of Olympic sponsor equities, and then short it ?

Coca-Cola Social Media Gimmick Censors "Gay" But Not "Straight"

Enjoy Coke, as long as you're not "gay" ?

In a startling new development, the world's largest sugary-drinks maker Coca-Cola has censored its social media followers from using the word "gay" in the company's new social media gimmick -- but not the word "straight."

The normally proud Sochi Olympics sponsor, Coca-Cola is expressing shame to its social media followers if they try to type the word "gay" into a meme generator that lets users affix brief messages on a blank red Coca-Cola can, but one that still bears the trademark white swoosh, or wave. The censorship is evidenced by a capture video of a computer screen's movements posted to YouTube by a user named Kaleb Sutra.

Social media followers who type the word "gay" are met with the following response : “Oops. Let’s pretend you didn’t just type that," the same as if followers had just typed in curse words, like "dick," "pussy," or "bitch."

Coca-Cola's association of "gay" with profanity comes on the heels of the proud Sochi Olympics sponsor trying to disassociate itself from the doomed marketing gimmicks of McDonald's, which launched a karmically-challenged social media campaign on Twitter with the hashtag #CheersToSochi in the face of a violent, seemingly government-sponsored crackdown against LGBT Russians following the passage of an anti-gay propaganda law last year.

• RELATED : Coke has gone into an Olympic-sized closet, downplaying its Sochi sponsorship (AMERICAblog)
• RELATED : U.S. Olympic Athletes Told Wearing Team Colors In Sochi Puts Them At Risk: Reports (Huffington Post)
• RELATED : New Activist Video Mocks Coca-Cola's "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing" Over anti-LGBT Russian Sochi Olympics (NYC : News & Analysis)

That the tinge of censorship has now befallen Coca-Cola's latest social media campaign reveals the adverse advertising conditions the large sugary-drinks maker must confront in connection with this year's controversial Winter Olympics, set to take place in Sochi, a southern Russian coastal resort town across the Black Sea from Turkey. Russia's anti-gay law has sparked global outrage ahead of the Olympics, and many foolish corporations like Coca-Cola, which blindly paid large sums of money to sponsor the Sochi Olympics, must now account to their customers for the sponsorship of the games in a nation that is violently cracking down against its very own LGBT citizens.

Since last summer, Coca-Cola had become the target of protests based on its sponsorship decision, and last week one LGBT activism group released a brilliant YouTube video, mocking Coca-Cola's morally bankrupt brand for having once sponsored multi-cultural dignity and respect but which now supports Russia's violent anti-LGBT crackdown.

No word yet on how Coca-Cola's own Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Ally (LGBTA) Business Resource Group, or its other Diversity Advisory Councils, are able to reconcile the corporation's controversial sponsorship of the Sochi Olympics.

Is it time for Greenlight Capital to short some stock ?

These latest marketing setbacks add to Coca-Cola's growing problems. Last year, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg launched a highly-visible attack on super-sized sugary drinks, seeking to ban the sale of high-calorie drinks as a way to fight obesity and obesity-related maladies, like diabetes and heart disease. A court blocked Mayor Bloomberg's ban on large sugary-drinks, but Mayor Bloomberg's successor has vowed to fight to restore the ban. Efforts to improve its corporate image have also proved to be problematic for Coca-Cola after the corporation faced allegations that it was depleting ground water and contributing to pollution in India. Coca-Cola's role in creating water shortages in India have led some local authorities to suggest last week that they would take actions to demolish a Coca-Cola bottling plant in Uttar Pradesh.

Coca-Cola is still recovering from the shocking 2009 documentary exposé, The Coca-Cola Case, of its labour violations in Colombia, Guatemala, and Turkey.

Similarly, the damage that McDonald's is doing to its own reputation following it's own deadly silence on the violent Russian LGBT crackdown comes at a time when the world's largest hamburger chain is losing customer loyalty and is facing an embarrassing sales slump. "We've lost some of our customer relevance," CEO Don Thompson told Wall Street analysts during a conference call this week.

Separately, it's unclear how much the credit card issuer VISA stands to lose, if anything, from the recent spree of credit card fraud impacting several large American retailers.

Is it time for Greenlight Capital to create a bespoke basket of Olympic sponsor equities, and then short it ?

Hunter Walker Responds To LGBTQ Critics ; Stays In Denial

Does Hunter Walker's response to LGBTQ critics reveals that he's a heterosexist in denial ?

@ddasilvacornell @jakebgoodman @lgbtcivilrights @maslowsneeds @gays4change @ljoywilliams @sarahrodeo @squarepeg_dem twitter.com/hunterw/status…

— Hunter Walker (@hunterw) December 6, 2012

Following a barrage of comments questioning the motivations and competency of Hunter Walker's article, Mr. Walker posted an inadequate response to his critics. Consider firstly how Mr. Walker claims that he wrote his story about Ms. McCray as a "political figure in her own right," but notice how Ms. McCray was subjugated as "Bill de Blasio's wife" in the original article's headline. Secondly, Mr. Walker avoids expressing any arguments as to why Ms. McCray's exploration of her sexual orientation should be political news in respect of the 2013 mayoral race. How did he intend to use "news" about Ms. McCray's sexual orientation ? What was his purpose to focus so much attention on Ms. McCray's marriage to Mr. de Blasio ? What do you think ?

Mr. Walker criticises the de Blasio-McCray marriage because of Ms. McCray's lesbian writings, but Mr. Walker never explains what kind of conforming wife a lesbian should be, to make her suitable for marriage ? Do you think that Mr. Walker comes across as a heterosexist in denial ?

From : "The Lesbian Past of Bill de Blasio's Wife" :

This article has generated many responses, including from some who have suggested it was inappropriate to cover this or that I have displayed a misunderstanding of human sexuality and the fluidity of sexual identity. One of the main issues raised by those who were not pleased with this story is that it is somehow not newsworthy and/or that family members of politicians should be "off limits."

There is no question in my mind that this story is news. Ms. McCray is a political figure in her own right. She is a top advisor on her husband's campaign, regularly speaks at his events, has taken a leading role on many political initiatives with him and writes regularly on the campaign site. Additionally, both Ms. McCray and Mr. de Blasio regularly write political columns together and have given several interviews about political aspects of their personal life. She has chosen to be a public, prominent figure on his campaign and in the New York City political world in general.

Furthermore, this story is not about digging into her private life. As outlined in this article Ms. McCray's past life as a lesbian involved being a fairly prominent lesbian activist. As this story notes, Combahee River Collective was a landmark group. It is incredibly interesting that Ms. McCray and her husband's campaign have (rather actively) omitted mentioning this aspect of her past including the characterization of the CRC as simply a "feminist" group. I do not think there is any question that identifying the past activism of a prominent political figure is news. It adds to her biography and raises interesting questions about why she and her husband's campaign have strenuously avoided noting this part of her past.

Critics of this story have cited the sentence where I said, "It is unclear how she transitioned from a self-described lesbian who was confident that she 'had always been more attracted to women, both emotionally and physically, than to men' to a political wife in a heterosexual marriage." It has been suggested that this displays some fundamental misunderstanding of the fact that people's sexual identities are often subject to change. That is not the case at all. Most people have evolving and individual concepts of their sexuality. I would have loved to discuss this with Ms. McCray and to have heard about how her identity evolved directly from her. I made many attempts to do this and would still be very interested in a conversation. Without speaking to Ms. McCray, making any definitive statements or assumptions about the evolution of her sexual identity would not have been respecting the fluid and changing nature of human sexuality. It would have been the exact opposite.

Lastly, and I debated whether to even dignify this with a response and give it further attention, some people have suggested this article is somehow "shaming" Ms. McCray and/or criticizing her and her husband. I defy anyone to point to any passages here that imply in any way that there is anything wrong about being homosexual. Those who would suggest that pointing her past activism and self-identification out is somehow "shaming" her are the ones implying being gay is something to be ashamed of, not me.

Many dissenting messages were also delivered to Mr. Walker via Twitter. Check out his @hunterw Twitter feed for the period of December 5-7, 2012.

Chloë Sevigny Transphobia ?

Chloë Sevigny Cries Over Wearing Prosthetic Penis

Chloë Sevigny has made some culturally incompetent remarks that border on transphobia about her current acting role : she plays a pre-op transgender hitman named Mia in her TV series, Hit & Miss, and had to wear a prosthetic penis, which she described as very upsetting, because "she was worried men would no longer find her attractive," The Daily Telegraph has reported.

"I cried every day when they put it on. You know, I’m ample-chested and I have this on," Sevigny said. "I felt very exposed, and it was hard, very hard, having people so close to your personal parts anyway - who you’re not sleeping with - for an hour-and-a-half each day, to put it on."

"Then looking in the mirror... it was weird. I was lonely and I felt really unattractive," the 37-year-old actress added. "I was confused about my desirability - was I desirable? - in having put that on, and having men see me with that on."

Ms. Sevigny's comments are more than just insensitive to transgenders, what you are dealing with here is ignorance -- deep ignorance on a personal level, when then rises to something worse : spreading hate, because our culture wrongly puts actors and other entertainment people up on pedestals. The right thing to do is to challenge Ms. Sevigny on it, so that she can examine what she is doing. Something similar to this (but not exactly) happened to the author Aphrodite Jones, who once said some very insensitive remarks. What happened to Ms. Jones was that she was challenged, and she came out of that having a new personal understanding that she now carries with her and talks about, having learned new sensibilities. The way I look at it, is as painful as Ms. Sivigny's words are, the key is to challenge Ms. Sivigny and engage her, so that she can learn from her own ignorance and selfishness. That's how you can hear Ms. Sivigny apologise, and then she can go on to speak about this experience to share her new sensibilities with other people.

To change the word, we need to be engaged in a conversation.

Taco Bell Discrimination Petition

Yum! Brands Employee at Taco Bell in Louisiana is Dismissed Because He is Gay

The LGBT civil rights group Connecting Rainbows is calling for a world-wide boycott of Yum! Brands restaurants.

Jason Ray Smith, a gay employee of Taco Bell restaurant in Bossier City, Louisiana, was dismissed from work because he was honest about his sexual orientation on his Facebook profile and on his Connecting Rainbows profile.

Members of Connecting Rainbows have started an online petition on Change.org, demanding that Taco Bell institute cultural competency training.

Mr. Smith was told he needed to be taken out to the corn field and have the gay beaten out of him. When he reported it, Mr. Smith was harassed and intimidated by Taco Bell management.

Connecting Rainbows, in turn, demands that :

• Yum! Brands restaurants apologize to Jason and the LGBT community ;
• rehire Jason and provide a hostile-free work environment, or compensate Jason for his loss of income and other damages ;
• stop discriminating against LGBT employees ; and
• provide diversity, cultural competency, and sensitivity training based on sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression for all Yum! Brands restaurant employees WORLD-WIDE !

Mr. Smith said that Taco Bell conditioned his rehiring on Mr. Smith deleting his Facebook account and deleting his Connecting Rainbows profile, which Mr. Smith has said he will NOT do. Sign our petition demanding that Taco Bell follow through on its commitment to diversity.