Matt Morris, the married gay singer-songwriter and one-time Mickey Mouse Club member, was thrilled when Best Buy started airing promo videos for his new record When Everything Breaks Open. Then he found out Best Buy was funding the effort to elect anti-gay Tom Emmer governor of Minnesota.
So Morris — who you might remember from dueting with regular collaborator Justin Timberlake during the Haiti relief telethon — took down the video he originally recorded (with much excitement) of him visiting his local Best Buy, and replaced it with the one above. So while he doesn’t want you to ban Best Buy outright — after all, he wants you to go into the store and buy his CD — he would love for you to take his record off the rack and replace it with some informational material about what the money you spend in Best Buy goes toward.
Dollie
Funny, I live really close to this guy and knew nothing of him (other than he’s a musician and our local record stores love to display his album front and center). I think I’ll finally check him out!
Interesting approach, though… +1 point for awareness. -1 point for still funneling money their way.
L.
@Dollie: I was thinking the same thing – why make BB richer? And then I thought that maybe he just couldn’t come out and say, “don’t buy the record but put HRC’s open letter in there”, as this could be construed as a boycott-and-littering sort of attack.
L.
(Mind you, his husband is apparently a psychic. Maybe he could have seen this one coming.)
Jaroslaw
I actually went on Mattmorris.net to buy the CD and it froze when I clicked on “BUY”. I will try it again. I never liked Best Buy to begin with; as to their company being anti-Gay, what a joke! A big chunk of the salespeople there and especially the computer staff are Gay anyhow! (from the several stores that I’ve been to).
I will defintely write BB a letter on the email and if I can stomach going in, turn in a comment card at the store next time I go by.
Clint
He’s super cute… but, HUH???
Cam
Wow, somebody willing to actually take a career risk for their values in the Entertainment world?! Good for Matt Morris!
Steve
Are we still on this?
Businesses don’t give a shit about any candidate’s social plan. If a business feels that a politician will support their business, they’re going to support that politician. This world isn’t as black and white as we make it out to be.
Darryl S
So the suggestion is continue to buy my CD..(read as self serving)…leave a letter…(read as littering). Why the big freakin drama over this…hes a gubernatorial candidate! He can only really effect what happens in Minnesota. Target and Best Buy’s reasoning for contributing to MN Forward was business related. Not everything in this world is about gay rights and unfortunately sometimes jobs and business will be more important. Doing anything on a local level will get you nowhere…contact corporate offices. Stores on local levels HARDLY ever deal with corporate offices unless its something huge. Random letters placed in stores, small pickets outside stores and individual displays of defiance dont show up on corporate office radars. When did you hear of a boycott or picket making a company change its mind?
Bitter Old Queen
Since we are on the subject of Best Buy: Best Buy has allowed it’s customer service to drop to Circuit City standards. Here in NYC (down in Chelsea) it is not unusual for 18 and 19 year old customer service reps to not make eye contact and in some cases actually walk in the other direction when a customer is approaching them. Customers have to actually hunt down reps to get assistance. You are never going to see a customer service rep over 30 years old.
Atrocious customer service had a lot to do with Circuit City’s demise. The best service is at the small, mom and pop electronic stores.
KWil
I think I should care so much about the issues involved but…… whaaaaa……. He is so HAAAAHT!!!!! what? he’s married?? FUCK!
Jaroslaw
Darryl S bad publicity and boycotts may not work as much as we would like but they do work. Probably not as well for Gay people since we are a tiny minority. But I think there was a thing called boycott the buses in the 60’s you may heard about….
Hilarious
Political issues aside why on Earth would anyone want to shop at Best Buy?
They have the worst customer service imaginable and encourage their employees to behave like used car salesmen.
Why subject yourself to laughable service when you have the internet at your disposal?
People shouldn’t shop their out or principle. This dude should really just promote iTunes and steer clear of Best Buy simply because they’re sleazy.
Ricky Wuz Here
bought his CD (at Borders) and love it. I also love how he explicitly thanks his husband in the liner notes leaving subtlty behind and actually making a bold statement. “I’m gay and married and I’m produced by Justin Timberlake!”
Ricky Wuz Here
@Hilarious: yea… I’m not going to lie. I went to Best Buy to see if I could score this CD (I haven’t been in over a year) and wow, has Best Buy gone down the crapper. I remember it used to have a pretty awesome CD collection that took up half of the store but now there are three rows. Also, he did not turn up in my Best Buy’s search and they told me they never heard of him. The service did suck. There seemed to be a little pow wow in the back and it appeared as if quite a few customers were looking for help and not finding it.
So yea… why? They suck. I went to Borders instead, which has also seemingly changed for the worst yet still managed to maintain the class I expect from them.