JetBlue, thou hath betrayed me!

In case you haven’t heard yet, JetBlue has signed on to sponsor the YearlyKos convention. Since everyone here is probably familiar with the curriculum vitae of the Daily Kos, I won’t bore you with the site’s history of posting essays pining for the death of Dick Cheney, rejoicing in Tony Snow’s cancer recurrence or praying for the speedy extirpation of Israel.

I guess there’s a chance that the people at JetBlue who signed off on this deal had no idea regarding who or what the Daily Kos is. They may have thought it would be a really cool and cutting edge thing to do to make inroads into those super-hip weblog thingies. Ironically, in the clip above, you’ll see JetBlue’s president CEO insisting that his company is apolitical.

That makes the decision to sponsor the YearlyKos officially a spectacularly stupid one. The Daily Kos is not only political, but a political lightning rod. It doesn’t get more political than the Daily Kos. The fact that someone at JetBlue thought it was a good idea to hitch their wagon to Markos’ star is truly stupefying. Because of its - cough-cough - free-wheeling open-posting policies, the Daily Kos can’t hope to achieve the respectability of publications like The American Prospect or The Weekly Standard. And I would even wager that those publications have trouble selling ads because some businesses are understandably wary of associating themselves with partisan publications.

STOP ME IF I’VE TOLD you this one before: When I was running for State Rep. in 1992, I asked my barber to put one of my campaign signs in his window. I figured it would be no problem. The man had literally been cutting my hair my whole life. My family still has the footage of him giving me my first haircut which, I’m sad to say, I didn’t take like a man. And yet he wouldn’t put my sign in his window. He explained to me that it could offend some paying customers, and he couldn’t do that.

The owner of the sandwich shop I frequented was an easier mark. He had only opened up a year ago, and was new to the world of retail. He happily put one of my signs in his front window and wished me good luck. The sign didn’t make it through the afternoon. After a couple of customers complained, he took it down. I understood – business is business.

The amazing thing about the JetBlue/YearlyKos thing is that people doing the advertising for JetBlue could be so ignorant regarding either the blogosphere or the nature of business. As far as business is concerned, you don’t attach yourself to an entity that not just alienates but also offends and angers half of your potential customer base.

Of course, there is the chance that the people at JetBlue had no understanding of who or what the Daily Kos is before Bill O’Reilly gave them a crash course last night. If that’s the case, JetBlue’s new management team is off to a truly pathetic start.

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