Today I received a well-forwarded email that asked people to boycott Target. The message alleged many reasons for the boycott. I am very sympathetic to boycotts, but I also like to investigate things for myself. I won't copy the email here, but among its many allegations, it claimed Target was a French owned company that discriminated against veterans in its giving policies. If these allegations were true, I would join the boycott.
However, the allegations are completely false. Target is a well run American company and it has made contributions to veterans. This is from the Veterans of Foreign Wars website.
The Veterans of Foreign Wars would like to remind all that the Internet culture weaves rumors and misinformation. Simply put, don’t believe everything you read. For example, an e-mail message urging veterans to boycott Target has been circulating on the Internet because a solicitation request to support “The Moving Wall” was denied.
Target has a long-held corporate policy regarding donations. And in all fairness, Target contributes more than $2 million weekly to charitable causes and is one of the corporate sponsors for the 2003 tour of the Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial Fund’s “The Wall That Heals.” “The Wall That Heals” is a traveling Vietnam Veterans memorial and museum that has a strong educational component for schools and serves to honor all our veterans.
The email I received has apparently become widespread enough that Target also mentions it on their web-site and clearly and honestly denies it.
This is a great example of why people need to fact-check what read via the internet as well as what they get from the media. And I hope my readers will continue to send me email, but please review the following before forwarding me a chain email.
Update: Another reader forwarded me this response to the false email:
I got this same e-mail weeks ago and was able to confirm that it was indeed a false rumor. Target for one is not a French company. They are part of the Dayton-Hudson group of store whose home base is in the midwest. Dayton owns Mervyns also. Pro-life groups have been boycotting Mervyns, Target and all other stores owned by this group because they have been, and are still, staunch supporters of planned Parenthood.
I believe this is also untrue, at least for now, but I am always willing to consider new information. According to my research, Target's parent company did support Planned Parenthood for many years. They briefly decided not to support Planned Parenthood in 1990, but changed their mind after pro-abortion supporters threatened a boycott. Of course, this triggered a boycott from the pro-life supporters. So Target tried to please everyone. They greatly reduced their funding to Planned Parenthood to about $18,000 per year and insisted that this money only be used for education on HIV/AIDS and pregnancy prevention at locations that do not perform abortions.
However, this compromise was unacceptable to many pro-lifers who correctly pointed out that money is fungible and that this freed up $18,000 for Planned Parenthood to use for other purposes and that Planned Parenthood was using their "education" funds to promote abortion. Target admitted the promotion of abortion charge was true at a press conference in 1990, but continued to provide the minor amount of funding to Planned Parenthood in an attempt to avoid controversy. Many pro-life groups continued to boycott Target. As one pro-life organization stated, they had already accomplished the financial part of their objective (the dramatic reduction to $18,000 per year, a nominal fee, did dry up this formerly large source of pro-abortion funding). However, the boycott continued because Planned Parenthood probably desired the credibility it received from the support of a major Minnesota corporation.
Thus, many pro-lifers continued to boycott Target for the next ten years. In January 2000, the Dayton Hudson company reorganized as the Target Corporation. Shortly thereafter, the Target Foundation stopped funding Planned Parenthood in any way, shape, or form. Like most groups that succumb to pressure, Target claimed the boycott was not a factor in their decision, but I don't believe reasonable people believed them any more than intelligent people believed that the EU's threat of trade war had no influence on the Bush administration's decision to eliminate the steel tariffs.
So it appears all pro-life boycotts ended in 2001 after Target ceased providing even a nominal sum to Planned Parenthood. These sources were used in compiling this column. Admiral Quixote is not associated with the Target Corporation.