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Kayak Defends Yanking Ad on Muslim Show

Says it doesn’t support bigotry, but show "sucked."

There’s nothing like a corporate blog post to make your company look even worse. The travel website Kayak defended its choice to pull advertisements from TLC’s controversial show All-American Muslim, in a blog post by chief marketing officer Robert Birge. Though Birge said his company handled things “poorly,” he said TLC pitched the show as a fair and balanced look at the Muslim American community, when it was really about the “pre-existing controversy surrounding race, religion and specifically the divide between the Muslim and Christian communities in Dearborn, Mich.” As if that weren’t enough, Birge went on to say that scrapping the ads “comes across as bending to bigotry” and caving to hatred. Finally, he expressed his main issue with the program: “I just thought the show sucked.”