i can’t believe i actually did it.

(if you haven’t read my last blog before this one, this one won’t make any sense)
ok . . . so for those of you who know me, you know that I am a VERY paranoid person when it comes to what other people think of me. I am a people pleaser to the max. I can’t stand to make people mad at me, and obsess over it if I think that people just might could be possibly the teeniest bit upset by something I said. I even have this horrible habit of when I am driving home from a function, replaying everything I said in my mind to think of anything that I might have said that someone might have taken wrong. With that said, I actually emailed Jeff Dennis and cc:ed Ronnie Bruce (WDJC) and told him that I had blogged about him, and copied and pasted my blog. Wow. I thought about just emailing him my opinion and not telling him that I had blogged it, but I thought, “no, I’ll be honest about what I did too. It may not have been the nicest thing to do, but I’ll admit to it.”
Well, within an hour, I had a response from him. I am posting it below:

Wow…

First I would like to have had the opportunity to explain before it was blogged but I will give it a shot anyway. I do appreciate you contacting me and I am sorry that the spot offended you.

The commercial that you spoke of regarding the men just running in was not intended that way. I have attached the spot, titled “Grocery Bag” for you to listen
to, but it was a spot that ran for Valentines Day and about how easy our store
was to access as opposed to going to the mall. Believe it or not, most men, when
shopping for Valentines, Christmas, or for many other occasions do come in, make
their selection and leave within 5 minutes. It doesn’t mean that they haven’t
spent hours researching or looking for something but Men typically don’t go into
a store or a mall to shop, they go in to buy and most do it VERY quickly.

As for the spot that referenced hunting, I have attached the mp3 (Your Time) of the spot also. While the spot is purely intended to be humorous, and I have gotten several positive comments about it from men and ladies, I can understand how some may find it offensive. My spots are written by me and anyone who knows me and has shopped with me knows that the intent of the commercials are not as you have described them. The last thing that I want to put across to the listeners is the mood or attitude that you described. I will ask WDJC to remove that particular spot.

I would also ask you to listen to the spot “She Does” or “Best Wife” These also ran during Valentines. Not one person has mentioned these spots to me, either positively or negatively. I wish before you blogged about it and I was lumped into having
“marriage destroying messages” and a “blantant attack against a Godly view of
Marriage” that you would have called me, Ronnie Bruce, or any other member of
the WDJC staff to talk about my beliefs, my views, or my intent. For
clarification, I will state that I have been married to my wife of 10 years, we
have 2 wonderful children, I am a born again man with lots of faults
but a wonderful savior! Over the course of my daily business, I have referred
countless individuals who have come into my store to marriage counselors and
right now on the top of my showcases are Birmingham Christian magazines, James
Dobsons book Marriage Under Fire, and Love Must be Tough, and even a book titled
Before the Ring. I am a very active member of Gardendale First Baptist Church
and while I appreciate you bringing your interpretation of the spot to my
attention, I strongly disagree with the assumptions that were made in your
blog.

Again, I would like to thank you for bringing the this to my attention and as I write the spots in the future, I will try to be more careful that my attempt at humor is not conflicted with other messages. If any of my future spots hit a chord with you, please do not hesitate to contact me.
Jeff

Here is my response to Jeff’s email:

You are very correct – I did not approach this in the right order. Biblically, according to Matthew 18, I should have come to you about it before blogging about it. If it is ok with you, I would like to post your response and an apology for my rash post. Just for your peace of mind, I am a new blogger, and I have very few readers. But I would really like to post your response as rebuttal to my rashness. :)

I understand what you are saying about the attempt to be humorous – I am just very sensitive to this, and marriage jokes are really a hot spot for me. I feel that the secular media’s biggest strategy in making things “acceptable” or “the norms” is to introduce them in a humorous, or even making-fun-of light, so that we all get used to the ideas, and then slowly accept them. The best example to me is the TV show Will and Grace – they made fun of the homosexual lifestyle and played up all of the stereotypes to help us all accept it as normal. I feel like many sitcoms do this with marriage as well – portraying the husband as a stupid oaf and the wife as the intelligent one who makes all of the decisions, such as Everybody Loves Raymond or King of Queens. Because I have realized over the past couple of years how these type of things affect the way I subconsciously perceive life, I am now hyper-sensitive to things like this, which is why I immediately was shocked by your commercial. I do apologize for blogging first and writing later, and I also apologize if I was rather blunt in my descriptives. I am actually feeling quite humbled and embarrassed of myself right now, because I am typically a VERY people-pleasing, sensitive of others’ feelings and what others are thinking of me – type person. So this was very out of character, and because of that, I’m feeling a bit shocked at myself. But I do stand behind my views of the “Your Time” commercial.

Your other two commercials were great. I especially like how complimentary you were of your wife in the one about her. :)

On the grocery bag one, I do see how it is meant to be humorous to other guys, but I still feel like in a way, it fosters that negative stereotype of men, focusing on how they don’t have time to do anything for their wife because of all their hunting and fishing and football, but now that I have listened to it again with your explanation, it is more humorous (on the guys side) than negatively stereotypical.

I guess it’s a little weird that all of my passion on this subject is really defending men and the perception of husbands, but I think that is because when I was engaged to be married 8 years ago, I had so many people (even at my Christian company) who told me how bad marriage was, and to just give it some time and I’d be miserable. On the contrary, my marriage has been a dream, and my husband absolutely amazing. He still dotes on me as much, actually MORE, than he did when we were dating. So I hate to see him, or other Christian husbands, portrayed in a negatively stereotypical way. It just doesn’t do them justice.

I really appreciate you listening to my input, and I am very impressed that you were willing to pull that commercial because of it. That takes a lot of integrity and intent to come across in a way that doesn’t offend. I really do see that it wasn’t your intention AT ALL to come across that way, and I will make sure that everyone that has read what I wrote knows that. It was unintentional on your part, and I don’t want anyone to judge you or your business by that commercial.

Rachel