In whatever arena of life one may meet the challenge of his
conscience -- the loss of his friends, his fortune, his
contentment, even the esteem of his fellow men -- each man must
decide for himself the course he will follow. The stories of past
courage can define that ingredient -- they can teach, they can
offer hope, they can provide inspiration. But they cannot supply
courage itself. For this each man must look into his own
soul.
-- John F. Kennedy in Profiles in
Courage
By: Jeffrey Lord
Mark Stevens was 17 years old when his father died.
A self-described "lower middle class" rebellious kid from
Queens, when Mark went about the task of ordering his father's
affairs, he discovered his father's bank account -- containing $84.
He was told that his best option was "to go on welfare."
Marks Stevens had another idea. Said Stevens in an interview
with The American Spectator: "I knew then at 17 I wasn't
going on welfare." If Mark was going to achieve anything in life,
he would have to be responsible for making that happen.
He made it happen.
Today the suddenly fatherless 17-year-old with an $84 dollar
inheritance is a highly successful businessman and bestselling
author of 25 business books, the very embodiment of the American
Dream. His marketing firm, MSCO, is "a
business-driven, entrepreneurial-minded marketing and business
advisory firm relentlessly driven to accelerate the growth of our
clients." The company, located in Rye Brook, New York, has 40
employees, and -- since health care is very much in the news --
yes, Stevens pays for their health insurance.
Life was good for Mark Stevens. Minding his own business,
literally and figuratively, he got up every day and went about the
business of business. Part of any business, of course, is
advertising. And as a routine part of his business, Mark Stevens
spends a considerable dime advertising MSCO in the expensive New
York media. MSCO ads have appeared on CBS, Bloomberg, ABC, WINS
radio in New York and even, where doable in the format, on NPR.
Then one day last month, out of the seeming blue, Stevens
arrived at work to learn the startling news that his office was
"getting actual phone calls" from people using (he eventually
realized) phony names and leaving phony numbers. What were the
callers saying? They called his female executive assistant a
"slut." Another employee, also a woman -- a lawyer and like Stevens
an up-by-her-bootstraps professional -- was taking calls from
hostile strangers telling her she was "anti-woman."
What was this?
It didn't take long for Stevens to find out.
One of the places MSCO was advertising was on The Rush
Limbaugh Show. Mark advertised MSCO there for one reason --
and that reason had nothing to do with politics. Simply put, Rush
has a huge audience, an audience of precisely the kind of potential
customers MSCO wants to reach.
Rush, Mark was aware, had generated controversy with a joking
description of the leftist Georgetown Law student Sandra Fluke as a
"slut" -- following a Limbaugh tradition of illustrating the absurd
by being absurd. Mark thought it a mistake and he disagreed. In
fact, Rush himself was shortly out there saying that his "choice of
words was not the best, and in the attempt to be humorous, I
created a national stir. I sincerely apologize to Ms. Fluke for the
insulting word choices."
No matter.
MSCO was now being targeted because it was an advertiser on
The Rush Limbaugh Show.
The calls and now an increasing
volume of hostile e-mail were pouring into MSCO.
Mark Stevens is a smart guy -- and he quickly realized he was
being targeted by somebody using a highly skilled, highly organized
campaign that was deliberately designed to make the target feel
besieged. When in fact marketing expert Stevens understood he was
on the receiving end of a campaign involving a tiny handful of
people extremely skilled in making others think dozens were tens of
thousands.
Mark was right.
What he did not know, could not know at the time, was
that this was a campaign being directed by the far-left Media
Matters. As detailed here
in "The Plot to Get Rush," Rush's advertisers -- and Mark was
decidedly not alone -- were being targeted by a campaign that had
been set up years ago waiting -- just waiting -- for Rush Limbaugh
to make some sort of "mistake" that would then be leveraged to try
and remove the conservative champion from the airwaves
altogether.
Rush's Fluke mistake provided that moment.
Crowed Angelo Carusone, the Media Matters "Director for Online
Strategy," of what swung into action after the Limbaugh Wednesday
broadcast:
"I started talking to advertisers on Thursday, and got a lot of feedback on Friday, and I knew a lot of movement was taking place. This was important to think about from a business perspective."
A lot of movement was taking place.
Indeed.
The leftist MoveOn.org enlisted, sending around a missive saying
flatly that they were going "station by station" where "outraged
listeners are organizing to get Rush off the air…"
AT MSCO, Mark Steven's employees were being assailed as sluts.
Threatening e-mails arrived from senders calling themselves a
"Citizen of the Internet" or "Policeman of the Internet."
Mark was astounded at first. Then he got mad. He was not going
to be bullied --period.
So Mark Stevens stood up. Which in 21st century America means he
accepted an invitation to appear on Stuart Varney's Fox Business
show, Varney and Company.
Sitting calmly in the television lights he let it rip. This
wasn't a boycott, he said, this was "an organized terrorist
attack." Part of "the war on business." He recounted tales of being
told he and his company were "under surveillance." With "every
move" being watched. There had been threats of physical violence.
The attacks -- coming from all over the country to a company that
advertised in the New York media -- were "insidious" and,
tellingly, they were "all the damn same." "You hate women," they
said to the man whose female employees out-numbered males. He kept
going: "I'm saying here publicly, if you're a liberal and don't
want to do business with my company -- MSCO -- please don't.
Don't ."
Then he laid down his response. Mark Stevens was not simply
going to continue advertising on The Rush Limbaugh Show.
No not after this. No, now Mark Stevens was going to "...double
down…triple down."
And the damn burst.
Now, the public had heard. Furious Americans got it.
The lid blew off a political pressure cooker, and Mark Stevens was
inundated with support from Americans around the country. Invited
to discuss the reaction with Megyn Kelly on Fox's America
Live, Mark
sat down to update.
He had received tens of thousands of e-mails. The
bullies -- the terrorists --had ramped up. Now they were
threatening to send busloads of people to his house, threatening
that his personal safety was in danger. "This is crazy," he said to
Kelly. Does this cause you concern, she asked? Replied Mark:
"Absolutely no concern. Let them come. Let them come!"
"Something is going on here that has to be, you know, addressed.
Because the country is at risk," he added.
Asked about advertisers who had pulled their ads, he said that
"I think the failing to take a stand in defense of America" is a
mistake. He had no sense he was going to be swept up in the middle
of this firestorm, but now that he was, he said: "Bring on the
buses!" He was going to advertise more heavily, and he was going to
stand his ground to try and be a bulwark against the bullies.
By the time I spoke with Mark Stevens this week he was not only
still determined to fight back -- a fight he now saw as a fight for
that cherished American value of free speech -- he had spent the
last several days reflecting on what he was seeing in America. He
was not happy.
Mark told me that he was "not a Pollyanna or naïve." But what
really bothered him was that in the flood of tens of thousands of
e-mails he had received, overwhelming in support of him, what stood
out "was the concern people had for my well-being." He drafted a
response to answer his fellow citizens who had written him with
such passion. He sent it to me, and it deserves an audience, so it
is reprinted here in full:
Subject line: The Battle for America
Ever since I appeared on the Stuart Varney show in response to
the "terrorism" -- Rush Limbaugh advertising boycott -- directed at
me and my company, my team and my clients, it has set off a chain
reaction of emails being sent to me from citizens across the
country:
* Seals have volunteered to protect our offices.
* Retired police officers are asking if they can help in
anyway.
* Citizens want to play a role, join the stand and contribute to
the cause. They are thanking me for having the courage to stand up
for free speech and for the American Dream.
Thousands upon thousands are writing, calling --frightened that
their nation is slipping away.
Sad, angry, suffocated, they no longer feel as if they live in a
democracy.
They are tired of the talking heads. Of the politically correct.
Of the minority rule. Of the loss of the meaning of the
Constitution. Of the weakening of our armed forces. Of the war on
business. Of the ass-kissing of America haters.
They are the real Americans. They work. They send their children
to war. They pay taxes. They want nothing for free. They are tired
of being ignored.
My message helped them see that "they" have the real power.
Peaceful but over whelming power. They will use it. We will do so
together. We will prevail.
The battle for American values is beginning and we will win.
Mark Stevens
CEO
MSCO | The Art and Science of Growing Businesses
CEO
MSCO | The Art and Science of Growing Businesses
All his life Mark said he had been taught that a "healthy debate
" was "how you learned." But he had come to wonder: "Why debate
with these people?" he asked rhetorically, "these people" meaning
those who had threatened his employees and himself. He compared the
task to a line he had once heard -- "turning the tide back with a
hammer." The people who had set their sights on intimidating him
were "a small number of people" -- of that he was certain -- but
they were intent on "throwing jello."
All those thousands of e-mails he had received in the days after
going on the Varney and Kelly shows were overwhelmingly positive in
his support. Not one of his clients, he said -- not one -- had
objected to his speaking out.
Talking over the phone, Mark was still overwhelmed at the
response, and the nature of it. "In the USA," he mused, here were
"ordinary people concerned about my being hurt physically" for the
simple act of advertising on Rush Limbaugh's show. It was almost,
he said, as if they feared he were a target of a "Mafia protection"
racket. Either he did what his critics demanded -- or else.
"More than that," he added, was the sense that all of his
supporters in this outpouring were frightened that he "has violated
the rules of a totalitarian society." Some e-mails came from
professionals, accompanied by photos of badges or official ID with
police forces as far away as Los Angeles. Mark understood. He too
had developed this uneasy feeling that standing up in today's
America was "like being an outspoken critic of the government under
a totalitarian regime." He paused. "We don't have it yet," he
mused, "but it's too much like that."
I thanked him for his time. And wondered.
Only this week the President of the United States -- the man who
led the charge for mandated health care -- had
attacked the Supreme Court of the United States, a co-equal
branch of government, as nothing more than an "unelected group of
people." An attack many saw as an attempt to intimidate the
Justices themselves.
The Attorney General of the United States had earlier this year
dismissed the idea of prosecuting Black Panthers armed with
nightsticks at a Philadelphia polling place as an attack on "my
people."
This came not long after former Department of Justice lawyer J.
Christian Adams came out with a book called
Injustice: Exposing the Racial Agenda of the Obama Justice
Department in which Adams details the transformation of DOJ
from the citadel of American justice into "a base used by leftwing
radicals to impose a fringe agenda on the American people."
These being but a handful of the latest incidents in an ongoing
surge of political correctness that, as we have previously noted,
has focused on attacking the free speech rights of radio or
television personalities and commentators Don Imus, Lou Dobbs,
Glenn Beck, Pat Buchanan and now Rush Limbaugh. With Sean Hannity
and former Alaska Governor and Fox commentator Sarah Palin next in
line.
And guess where the startling story of Mark Stevens has
not appeared? You got it. He hasn't heard boo from the
Mainstream Media. Meanwhile, over there at NBC News, the network
has
finally been forced to own up to the fact that it doctored a
911 call from the Trayvon Martin killing suspect George Zimmerman,
an "edit" that cast Latino Zimmerman as a racist when in fact his
identification of Martin as black was in response to a specific
question from the 911 operator.
Taken together, is it any wonder Mark Stevens picks up the
urgent sense from his admirers that America is slowly descending
into totalitarian depths.
The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) makes a point of tracking
free-speech issues on college campuses. What they have found is not
a pretty picture, as detailed in this
interview with Fire's senior vice president Robert Shibley when
the group released a report citing the top 12 colleges or
"Censor-U" institutions in the country. From Ivy League
institutions (Harvard and Yale) to places like the University of
Cincinnati, Syracuse, and Michigan State, FIRE illustrates in
chapter and verse just where and how the American Left schools its
budding followers on just how to go about shutting down the First
Amendment.
Is it any wonder that the Georgetown Law student who launched
the Rush episode -- Sandra Fluke -- was herself found to be front
and center as a Cornell undergrad in shutting down the free speech
rights of a pro-life group scheduled to speak on her campus? As
reported
in this space in "Rally for Rush," Breitbart's Charles Johnson
had opened a Big Government story on Fluke by reporting:
As a student at Cornell and treasurer of a pro-choice organization at the school, Sandra Fluke, helped shut down a pro-life speech on Cornell's campus by counter protesting. She argued that a pro-life organization at Cornell was about "manipulating [students'] emotions" with misleading statistics about abortion. But when it is her turn to speak on Capitol Hill, the third-year Georgetown Law Student demands she gets her say in a hearing that has nothing to do with birth control.
Or, more simply put, free speech for me -- but not for thee.
As we have noted here repeatedly, from the French Revolution and
its guillotines, to the Russian Revolution and the lists of
"enemies of the state" on down through the years to the Nazi's
forcing Jews to wear yellow stars (with still worse to come) and
Mao's Red Guard forcing dissident's to play "Chinese Roulette"
(where a group of dissidents are gathered together but only a
random few shot -- leaving the survivors with a "bullet of fear"
imbedded forever in their mind, guaranteeing their terrified future
cooperation) -- fear and intolerance are at the very heart of the
Left.
A relative handful of American leftist political terrorists just
tried to play the 21st century American version of Chinese Roulette
with Mark Stevens. They tried to intimidate him into withdrawing
his advertising from The Rush Limbaugh Show.
They not only failed, they made a mistake. Just yesterday he was
back on Stuart Varney's
show after his conversation with The American
Spectator
Mark Stevens isn't going to sit quietly after this. In his own
words?
"The battle for American values is beginning and we will
win."
There was another quote that came to mind after to talking to
Mark. A famous line from Andrew Jackson: "One man with courage
makes a majority."
Mark Stevens says he doesn't think he's a hero.
His fans do not agree.
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