[MT] Washington Mutual Ads

Washington Mutual is the Seattle based thrift bank that has risen to
national success in the last ten years.  The reasons for this success, in my
opinion, are two fold.

First, they have, along with former Mayor Norm Rice, a banker, been a big
part of opening up housing ownership opportunities to minorities - as well
as white women, including the sizable population of lesbians in that city
proper.  This is a good thing.

They have also benefited from the run-up of local real-estate prices due the
Microsoft and Internet boom.  It is quite likely that the State of
Washington as a whole made more money from successful folks with a bit of
home equity bringing that equity to the state than they ever did, or will,
from Microsoft itself.  This is OK if you are in Microsoft trough, but the
Microsofties have not done much to spread the wealth - save perhaps to their
upscale white girl escort services.  (Which, not coincidentally, may well be
staffed by a lesbian work force.)

The current Washington Mutual ad therefore has me quite complex.  It's
general tone is one that is anti-technology, and it appears to be
anti-microsoft.  The ad starts of with this amazing new technology that
takes care of your 'Bills'.  Now it is clearly not a political attack ad
against the Gates family, but what conclusion is one supposed to be drawn
when you have a bank spokesperson standing in front of a smoking, broken
robot entitled 'BILL 'B' GONE'?

Why is Washington Mutual so rudely distancing themselves from Microsoft?
Are they aware of actual legal malpractice of that firm?  Or are they just
concerned about associating with an organization that has 50 Billion in
someone's bank and can't make their product work reliably?

Either way it strikes me as the wrong way to go about it- and if anything a
testimony to the absolute immaturity of the baby boomer leadership that has
'mushroomed' here in Seattle.

It probably also foreshadows a likely drop in local real estate prices -
which is going to hit there minority clients the hardest.

Washington State has passed both tax relief and affirmative action measures,
just like California - yet the same power structure that has given us both
Washington Mutual and Microsoft has also openly violated these lawful
measures.

The end result of all of this will likely be that the minorities in question
will lose their jobs and their houses because of the gross corporate
mismanagement of the Seattle area.  One that absolutely refuses to be
accountable to anyone, whether it be the voter - or the customer.

-D.L.