Latest In The "Haters" War: JC Penney Causes Breast Cancer, Stern, O'Reilly Unite, and Wall Street Doesn't Care

After 5 days of silence on the matter, Degeneres herself addressed the issue in her monologue (after a celebratory nod to the Prop 8 decision): "My haters are my motivators." She also pointed out that One Million Moms has only 40,000 friends on Facebook - hardly close to a figure of one million.*

And speaking of Facebook, a group called " one million people who support Ellen for JC Penney " has garnered over 60,000 "likes" in 24 hours - more than OMM can seem to scare up.

UNLIKELY ALLIES

The controversy has made some unlikely allies: both Howard Stern and Bill O'Reilly of FOX News have come out in support of the JC Penney decision and against OMM. O'Reilly had some particularly "stern" words (sorry, couldn't resist it) for OMM comparing its campaign to McCarthyism and calling it a witch hunt. Degeneres herself thanked O'Reilly for the support. 

The CEO of JC Penney, Ron Johnson, addressed the situation quite eloquently when he said that  Ellen stood for the very things JC Penney was founded upon  "fairness" and the "Golden Rule."  (click on the link - the video was not allowed to be embedded - by CBS).

The Culture War Defined

Although the JC Penney controversy is not a defining moment in the culture wars, it helps to highlight the frustration and the distress the Right is experiencing with other aspects: the recent Prop 8 decision was about equality for a certain part of America more than the subject of same-sex marriage. The phenomena of "It Gets Better" statements/videos is about hope in the face of bullying and religious intolerance more than prevention of teen suicides.

We recently saw the unmitigated and ridiculous statements the Right came out with concerning gays and gay sex (Gerbils, Cell Phones and Bats Up The Butt). The JC Penney controversy simply continues the trend.

* OMM seems to have trouble with numbers and figures: one of it contentions is that only 1.7% of the U.S. population is gay. Apparently all gay people go to at least twenty Pride events each year.