Dear #Centerplate: Our concern was never about whether or not your organization supported animal cruelty. I believe most would have given you the benefit of the doubt. So in everything you say this week about your decision to fire Des Hague, the last thing we need to hear over and over again is how you oppose animal cruelty. Yet, you continue to make that the key message in all of your public communications, which is why I write this short letter. What pissed off America was how you -- that is, your board members, your executive management team, your marketing strategists, your media outreach folks -- handled the situation. You basically said that if #DesHague simply pays $100k and goes through some sort of therapy, youll forgive him and let him continue leading your company & serving American consumers. This is an irrational and unforgivable pardon. Although distinctively different in morality, I do dare compare your approach to this to the concurrent Change.org petition related to the convicted Steubenville high school football player rapist who was sent to prison (a form of corrective therapy, I suppose) for raping a defenseless minor, and upon his recent release, was invited back to his football team by his coach. You see, Centerplate, you almost became the high school coach here. Couple this with everything else you did -- from continually scrubbing your Wikipedia pages, to removing important information from your website, to preventing the public from trying to contact you and figure out who they can voice their concerns to, to allowing Desmond Hague to release an untruthful and unsympathetic apology (including one in which he claimed not to be the owner of the dog, which was later disputed as inaccurate by the SPCA) -- and youll see a perfect recipe for the PR disaster you made exponentially worse. Although decent human beings will never forgive Desmond Hague, I believe we will forgive you, Centerplate, because we know that a company is much more than its CEO... Because we know that being kind to kind living beings who cannot defend themselves, is a fundamental value that bonds human beings with compassionate hearts... Because we know that your decision to remove Des Hague wasnt easy for you, but was made in response to the indestructible strength of our belief that a human being, especially a leader or influencer, needs to be kind, and anything less will not be tolerated. Dan Kim
Posted on: Tue, 02 Sep 2014 16:56:44 +0000
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