Cynic: "I found it a shabby attempt to put blame on a corporation simply because of its corporate status. There's too much underthought activism against anything larger than the corner grocer, and this is a choice example. Bullfighting, like rodeo, is very low-brow entertainment and I do not support it. I am not interested in the spectacle of animal torture. But I am also not ready to demonize Pepsi, not on these grounds at least. Next?"You surely are also not interested in supporting human rights abuses, yet you would also likely deny that PepsiCo was supporting just that (thanks to consumers' dollars) in Burma (Myanmar) until boycott pressures "forced" them to withdraw their support of a repressive military regime. Your insistance that the criticisms come merely because of Pepsi's corporate status is yet another example of the eagerness of citizens of industrialized nations to deny the impact that their consumer dollars have. The path of the buck does not stop at the grocery store counter, despite our willful blindness beyond that point.
It is no coincidence that boycotts tend to be against large corporations. Obviously, if you want a corporation to change its policies it takes a lot more concentrated consumer pressure than it would take to have "Mom 'n' Pop's Deli Corner Store" change theirs. Also, the Moms and Pops of this world tend to be a little more ethical in their dealings, because their customers know their practices, and they themselves are not removed from the consequences of their actions by 27 rungs of corporate america like your average multinational is.
Pepsi supports sports like rodeo and bull fights for one reason: money. Namely, yours and mine. And those sports prosper for one reason: money. Namely, corporate money, which in turn originated in your wallet and mine. To deny these connections is immoral (if, in this case, you consider animal torture immoral, or if, in the case of Nike and Shell for example, you consider human rights abuses immoral), self-serving, and lazy. It's also, speaking frankly, despicable when someone actually makes the EFFORT to convince people otherwise. Using another example, two hundred years ago, would you say the same things about those who opposed the slave trade?
