Abercrombie and Flinch

If you go into your local shopping mall, you’ll find something missing from the counter at Abercrombie & Fitch, the clothing store that uses porn to sell clothing to kids. The Christmas edition of its quarterly magazine is gone. Although the company won’t admit it, economic pressure from thousands of citizens is almost certainly the reason it pulled the “Christmas Field Guide” from all 651 stores. The issue featured pictures of naked male and female models in sexual poses, including group sex. And advice from a so-called “sexpert” urges kids to get as much sexual experience as they can in college—including “sex for three.”

How this came about is an interesting story. Joe Gibbs, former coach of the Washington Redskins and now a NASCAR owner, called me a month or so ago absolutely outraged over the Abercrombie & Fitch catalog. I’ve done several BreakPoints on the issue. He also called my friend Jim Dobson. Jim got on the air immediately on his radio show and urged listeners to call Abercrombie and say they were boycotting the products. Groups like the American Decency Association and the National Coalition for the Protection of Children and Families joined in.

The result? The day before Thanksgiving, my colleague Anne Morse went into an Abercrombie store in Bethesda,  Maryland. As Morse wrote on National Review Online, when she asked for a copy of the quarterly, she was told by a manager that all Abercrombie stores had been ordered, the day before, to stop selling the quarterly. No reason was given for the decision, the manager said.

Morse called Abercrombie’s national headquarters in Ohio. Abercrombie CEO Mike Jeffries was not available, but an employee told Morse that Abercrombie stores were being boycotted all over the country. And he said the company had been receiving three hundred calls per hour from citizens angry about its catalog exposing kids to porn.

Who, Morse wanted to know, was behind the boycott effort?

“Ever hear of Dr. Dobson?” the young man replied.

Morse then called the company’s ordering number and asked if she could buy a copy of the quarterly over the phone. No, she was told; from now on, the quarterly will be available only to people with existing subscriptions.