Dear Editor:
The story told in “Area leaders call ‘big cans’ offensive” (May 17, multiple editions) was disappointing. New Yorkers face a 9 percent unemployment rate, with an additional 7 percent more who have given up looking, a looming multibillion-dollar municipal budget shortfall, a growing $65 billion dollar long-term debt and long-term pension funding shortfalls in the billions — along with critical issues dealing with education, housing, transportation, public safety and the environment, just to name a few.
Don’t City Council members Leroy Comrie, James Sanders Jr. and Julissa Ferreras have more important issues to deal with than going after the Arizona Iced Tea firm’s “I Love Big Cans” campaign promoting their 23-ounce beverages?
Even if this was meant to be a play on words, it would be no different from standard street corner or bar conversations wherein someone refers to a woman with “too much junk in the trunk.” In the real world outside the City Council, no one really cares about these phony issues.
Arizona Iced Tea distributors provide gainful employment for hundreds of warehouse and delivery people. Supermarkets, local delis and bodegas who stock Arizona Iced Tea and related products assist in providing thousands of additional jobs.
All of these people are our neighbors who are just trying to earn a living. Businesses and employees alike pay taxes that help pick up the tab for municipal services. Customers purchase these products under no coercion.
How disappointing to see that progressive liberals like Council members Comrie, Sanders and Ferreras are throwing their lot in with the Moral Majority social police and politically extreme conservatives who attempt to use government rules, regulations and the threat of boycotts to impose their own moral values on others. For those who don’t like Arizona Iced Tea, please feel free to purchase a competitor’s product. You are welcome to pay more for a far less satisfying iced tea.
This is the basic nature of free enterprise and how life works in a free society. Companies use advertising and marketing to promote their products. Consumers are free to make their own individual decisions. They can choose to select which product they desire to patronize.
Welcome to the discussion.
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