Sears and Penney Respond to ‘SNL’ Sketch Complaint

So did a comedy sketch on the Feb. 16 edition of “Saturday Night Live” called “Djesus Uncrossed” really lead two companies to ask NBC not to place their ads in future editions of the show

Not really.

In what appears to be a textbook case of companies dancing around a protest campaign organized by a special interest group, the companies, Sears and J.C. Penney, have made arrangements to avoid placing any ads adjacent to online replays of the sketch in question, but that will not affect any commercials in the television version of “SNL.”

That is not exactly how the situation was described in a news release issued Tuesday by The American Family Association, a long-time activist group that monitors television programming and initiates occasional advertiser boycotts to protest content it deems offensive. The release announced that the companies had “responded to the AFA by pulling their advertising from NBC’s show, ‘Saturday Night Live.’ ”

But J.C. Penney does not avertise in the television show, according to Kate Coultas, the senior manager of media relations for the company. And Sears, which does occasionally run commercials in “SNL,” never promised the AFA to stop doing so, and the protest by AFA will have no impact on its plans to advertise in the show in the future, according to an executive at the company. Because of the sensitivity of dealing with groups who can threaten to initiate consumer boycotts, the executive asked not to be identified.

A corporate spokesman for the company, Howard Riefs, did issue a statement, which said: “We received customer feedback about our ads running on NBC.com and Hulu in a rotation with other advertisers around the online rebroadcast of that particular SNL episode. We informed customers that it wasn’t supposed to happen, and while going forward we may advertise on the broadcast, we’ve taken steps to ensure that our commercials do not air online exactly as they did in thi! s situation.”

Tim Wildmon, the president of AFA, said in a telephone interview that the AFA had been told by Sears that “they were not going to advertise in the show anymore.”

All of this was in reaction to the “SNL” show on Feb. 16, which was hosted by Christoph Waltz, the actor who won the Oscar for his portrayal in the Quentin Tarantino film “Django Unchained.” The sketch was a satire on the often garish violence Mr. Tarantino uses in his films. It was called “Djesus Uncrossed” and featured Jesus as an action hero, back from the dead and “preaching anything but forgiveness.”

Presented as a movie trailer, the sketch followed Mr. Waltz as Jesus, wreaking vengeance on the Romans, with swords and guns that generated wild sprays of blood. It also included fake critical endorsements like: “I never knew how much Jesus used the N-word.”

The sketch drew an enormous amount of coment on Twitter and other sites; some took the show to task for crossing a line of taste, some praised the show for the daring (and humor) of the sketch.

Mr. Wildmon said that the protest began after “supporters alerted us to the sketch.” (He said he did not see it on the air.) Once he did watch it, he said, “I found it appalling. This was indefensible. It was not borderline. Using Jesus Christ himself as a cartoon figure I know you wouldn’t see them doing this with Muhammad.”

Mr. Wildmon said the the group followed its usual procedure, sending an e-mail to about 2 million followers and asking them to initiate a mass e-mail to advertisers, in this case Sears and J.C. Penney. They were chosen, Mr. Wildmon said, because they were “family businesses” that sold products to many of the group’s followers.

The AFA made no effort to contact NBC directly, he said, because reaching out to the advertisers was more effective.