A little over a month ago I covered a story about a letter which had been sent to Roger Goodell of the NFL by child advocates Child AbuseWatch.

It was a modest letter, questioning his wisdom in hiring The WHO to play for the Super Bowl in Miami. The letter pointed out that Pete Townshend has a history as a registered sex offender in the UK and the American public would be offended by that.

The letter went ignored for several weeks, until I made mention of its existence in a piece I wrote and of its inability to rouse any acknowledgement from the NFL. A second letter did elicit attention.

I need to question Mr. Goodell and his staff on two issues.

First, the choice of bringing a foreign, albeit talented, group with the kind of clouded history Townshend has.
Second, ignoring a notification sent, in advance of your public announcement, in an effort to prevent the media attention it has now garnered.

Had Mr. Goodell or anyone on his staff, taken the time to notice the source of that letter, they may have hastened their effort in replying. They might have done a quick Google search and found that only one year earlier, this same group, quietly pushed Hewlett Packard into pulling their world-wide multimillion dollar “Touch” campaign.

Like the NFL, Child AbuseWatch wrote a simple letter, informing the Hewlett Packard CEO, Mark Hurd and their board of directors, that the theme song 'Do you wanna touch?' which charmed its way into millions of households world-wide was actually paying royalties to convicted British pedophile Gary Glitter.

Like the NFL, Hewlett Packard ignored the letter asking that they not provide further wealth to a man whose deviance was so overtly obtuse, leaving Child AbuseWatch no alternative but to approach the media.

Over 350 media outlets, world-wide, picked up the Gary Glitter-Hewlett Packard story with rumors of a boycott of HP products. HP in short order, pulled their campaign and re-launched after a major re-vamp.

Over the past ten days the story of the objections to NFL‘s hiring of Pete Townshend of the Who, for it’s half-time entertainment has already reached over 450 media outlets world-wide. And the attention is still building with the Super Bowl just over a month away.

There’s an important lesson here. If someone takes the time to tell you that there’s a kid playing with matches at the side of your house, take the time to investigate before your house goes up in flames.

A stitch in time saves nine.

Hewlett Packard learned their lesson too late. The question is, will the NFL?
 

See: Child AbuseWatch

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