If out-of-touch corporations feel the need to issue unnecessary statements about terrorist attacks, the least they could do is abandon the mealy-mouthed progressive public relations buzzwords and actually condemn terrorism in some fashion.
The terrorist truck attack that killed at least 15 people on Wednesday was committed by a man who had announced his support for ISIS. That attack had a knock-on effect of delaying the Sugar Bowl between the University of Georgia and the University of Notre Dame from Wednesday night to Thursday afternoon. As a result, Allstate, the insurance company sponsoring the game, felt the need to issue a statement during ESPN’s broadcast.
Here is what Allstate CEO Thomas Wilson said in response to an ISIS terrorist killing 15 people after offering his prayers to the victims: “We also need to be stronger together by overcoming an addiction to divisiveness and negativity. Join Allstate working in local communities all across America to amplify the positive, increase trust, and accept people’s imperfections and differences. Together, we win.”
Is the implication of this that our “addiction to divisiveness and negativity” is behind the ISIS terrorist killing people? Or, that we must accept the “imperfections and differences” of terrorists? This corporate-speak would be normal, if still grating, the day after Election Day, but why is shaming Americans for an “addiction to divisiveness” the first thought after an ISIS terrorist murdered 15 people with a truck? Why is lecturing people about “accepting imperfections” top of mind here?
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No one actually needed Allstate to chime in here at all, but if Allstate felt so compelled to speak, anything along the lines of ‘We know that Americans will come together in the aftermath of this tragedy, and no act of terrorist violence will break the common bond and values we share’ would be infinitely better. Instead, we got a sanitized version of a DEI statement about people’s “imperfections and differences” after blaming Americans for being too divided and negative.
Allstate and Wilson, in their liberal corporate bubble, did not recognize how out-of-touch this statement was or how it would be interpreted by people who don’t drown themselves in corporate diversity-speak every day. Wilson should issue an apology on camera and move on from any PR staffers who thought shaming Americans for an ISIS terrorist attack was a good message to send.