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Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
From: hsm@unislc.slc.unisys.com (Helge Moulding)
Subject: P&G About to Raise Hell in Ogden
Date: Tue, 29 Aug 1995 18:50:47 GMT

As has been mentioned here before, accusing P&G of supporting satanism is likely to get you sued. An Ogden, Utah, man who distributes for Amway is the latest to receive an object lesson.

P&G are alleging that RLH (do I feel like a chicken shit for not putting in the full name or what?) spread the rumor using the Amway voice mail system. (The newspaper calls this email. What the hell do they know...) P&G want $50,000 from the poor slob.

Anyway, RLH is certainly not alone in his delusions. During a TV interview, a fatigue clad representative from the Planet of Tiny-Brained People recounted the familiar litany of accusations against the soap manufacturer: that the company contributes some of its profits to support satanism, and that the company's president admitted these nefarious activities on the Donahue show.

I was disappointed to hear that at least this newscast did not attempt to *forcefully* dispell the myth. I briefly considered calling them with a pointer to http://www.cathouse.org/, but figured that the downside of such a move might be worse than any possible gain...

Anyway, P&G reportedly have filed 14 lawsuits since "the early 80s, and about half of them have involved Amway distributors." I suppose that explains the stories we were hearing that the whole thing was started by an Amway distributor... Say, is Amway some shady front for Xians?

Apparently P&G is tracking the peaking of the rumor, finding that the calls and letters hit high water marks in 82, 85, 90, and again this year, in May. According to Elaine Matthews, spokes animal for P&G, the company received 22 calls a day in March this year, rising to 200 per day, and dropping since to about 100. There was no comparison offered to the previous peaks...

Amway is, of course, against spreading false rumors about the competition. Mark Longstreet, Amway's counterpart to Ms Matthews, released a statement which indicated their "past efforts to help stop this rumor," and a promise to "continue to cooperate with P&G." Interestingly, P&G complains that "past efforts to contact [Amway] and get this problem resolved has [sic] not helped much."

The Salt Lake Tribune newspaper article from which I gleaned much of the above information also mentions a $100M suit against Prodigy, where an investment bank is trying to stop "defamatory" messages from being posted to the "Money Talk" forum. This mention indicates the level of legal cluelessness of many people, trying to equate voice mail with electronic bulletin boards, or the perpetrator of a libel with the owner of a broadcast medium. Oh well...
-- 

        Helge "Coming clean?" Moulding
        (Just another guy with a weird name)



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