Monster High El Musical

Jeremy C.,First of all, no one is “denying” anyone aniynthg. If you take a look at the update to my post, Toys R Us generously decided to give prizes to all three babies born at midnight on January 1.Secondly, as you point out, Toys R Us is a private company. As such, this contest was a humungous PR boondoggle. They’re not being altruistic here, regardless of the “We Love All Babies!!!” language they used in announcing the three-way prize. They’re trying to win goodwill and customers. From that standard, the only one that matters in this particular case (again, we could all argue differently if this were a true issue of civil liberties being denied–though I suspect people’s opinions wouldn’t change that much), Toys R Us acted out of plain stupidity. Here are some rules for PR if you’re a giant corporation.1.) Don’t announce you have a winner before you’re sure the winner adheres to your rules.2.) If you do, and a hidden problem emerges, try to correct the problem in a way that doesn’t frame you as “giant corporation vs. baby and working class parents.” You can talk about right and wrong all day, but this is just plain bad situation management.3.) When you correct the problem, make sure that the correction makes you look even more like a good guy than the original promotion did. Note: This is the only part of the process that Toys R Us actually got right. But a little late, and overwhelmed by the earlier bad publicity.As far as whether a U.S. citizen born to an undocumented mother “deserves” to win a prize from Toys R Us, my personal belief is that if TRU doesn’t check for green cards when parents are buying stuff at their stores, they shouldn’t be so picky about who gets to win their savings bonds.And Jeremy C. and Anonymous…I assume you never eat in Chinatown, buy American-made clothing, or eat fruit grown in the U.S., right? Because all of these are business categories that are currently fundamentally dependent on undocumented labor. I’d love to see the same people who want to “send the illegals packing” engage in an organized boycott of all industries that benefit from cheap “illegal” labor–that would send a much less hypocritical message than focusing attacks on the workers themselves. But, hey, that actually requires sacrifice, so I doubt that’ll ever happen.