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Slim-Fast Drops Whoopi Goldberg Over Anti-Bush Remarks
The ad campaign featuring Whoopi Goldberg began eight months ago.
Comic Whoopi Goldberg's sexual puns on President Bush's name at a John Kerry fundraiser got her canned Wednesday as spokeswoman for Slim-Fast weight-loss products.
Waving a bottle of wine, Goldberg launched her double entendres in New York City last Thursday at a gala that raised $7.5 million for Kerry's campaign and the Democratic National Committee. Other performers at the event called Bush a "cheap thug" and a liar. A Bush campaign spokesman called the concert a "star-studded hate fest." Calls for boycotting Slim-Fast shakes and snacks spread through conservative Web sites.
The West Palm Beach, Fla.-based maker of diet aids said Wednesday that it is pulling the 8-month-old ad campaign that features Goldberg calling herself "a big loser." Terry Olson, Slim-Fast general manager and vice president of marketing, said the company regretted that Goldberg's remarks "offended some of our consumers."
Unrepentant, Goldberg said in a written statement Wednesday that "just because I'm no longer in those (commercial) spots, it doesn't mean I will stop talking. While I can appreciate what the Slim-Fast people need to do in order to protect their business, I must also do what I need to do as an artist, as a writer and as an American - not to mention as a comic."
The Kerry campaign distanced itself from Goldberg. "Our campaign has made it clear that those comments were inappropriate and crossed the line," said Chad Clanton, a Kerry spokesman.
"I only wish that the Republican re-election committee would spend as much time working on the economy as they seem to be spending trying to harm my pocketbook," Goldberg said.
Slim-Fast is a unit of Unilever. Unilever executives have donated $3,000 to Bush and $1,250 to Kerry for 2004's campaign. Slim-Fast founder F. Daniel Abraham, who sold the company to Unilever in 2000, is a major donor to Democrats and has given $2,000 to Kerry this year.
Slim-Fast's parting ways with Goldberg over political outspokenness is reminiscent of the Florida Citrus Commission's firing of singer Anita Bryant as a celebrity hawker of orange juice in 1977. Bryant had led opposition to a Miami-Dade County ordinance banning discrimination against gays.
Source: AP