Sweet Love
IBL Representative
I did not see this anywhere, so sorry if it is a Honda. I have to say this jumped out at me when I saw it. I am a life-long Jets fan that grew up 20 minutes outside of East Rutherford and spent many Sunday half-times in the spiral walkways getting beer dumped on me as a kid for a pocketful of change (Jets/Giants fans from the 80s will know what I am talking about). I am not Jewish, but have married a Jew and am raising my kids Jewish. I mention this because over the past 10 years, I have learned what "driving a German car" means to most Jews; I also know that many Jets fans are Jewish and having family now that is Jewish, I have to say, I would be put off myself if my own team sold out to company that swindled many of it patrons' predecessors...Put it this way: You go to a Jets game, buy a knish (traditional Jewish food) and a kosher hot dog (the current stadium vendor sells both), only to sit in seats subsidized by a company that helped eliminate your parents/grandparents.
On the flipside, what can Allianz do to make up for their wrongs? Obviously their current CEO and management group had NOTHING to do with the Holocaust, yet they are still supposed to be responsible for their predecessors atrocities. My personal thought is that they should bow out gracefully and if they really want to sponsor a stadium to raise their company's awareness in the US, do it somewhere else.
MODs: This is on the line of Shark Pool and FFA, so no worries if you move it to the FFA.
Stadium Naming Meets Resistance
By RICHARD SANDOMIR
Published: September 11, 2008
In five years as the chairman of the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority, Carl Goldberg said he has never received as many calls and media requests as he has since Wednesday about the Jets’ and the Giants’ talks to sell the naming rights to their new stadium to Allianz, a German insurance company with historic ties to the Nazis.
“We’ve dealt with a lot of controversial issues, but this has struck a nerve in a wide range of communities,” Goldberg said by telephone on Thursday. “I’m not sure if the sports authority does or does not have the legal right to intercede.”
The sports authority, which has no financial role in the $1.6 billion stadium, can only reject a naming rights deal with gambling, alcohol, tobacco or firearms sponsors.
“There is some language,” Goldberg added, “which can be debated, that can be construed as a morality provision.” But he said he will not do anything proactively until the Giants and Jets come to him and say they intend to proceed with the Allianz deal.
Scott Stringer, the Manhattan borough president, sent letters to Jets and Giants executives on Thursday asking that they end their negotiations with Allianz, and to Goldberg, demanding that the authority “act boldly” to spurn any ties with Allianz.
Stringer wrote to Goldberg that Allianz’s actions to expiate its guilt or make financial restitution should have nothing to do with a rejection of its bid. The company’s postwar behavior, he added, cannot reduce the pain Holocaust survivors and their families would feel if they saw Allianz’s name on the stadium.
“The name of Allianz on that stadium will bring enormous harm to the public,” Stringer wrote. “In this case, the harm may be emotional, but it is no less real.”
The teams maintained a curious silence on Thursday about the status of the deal, and a spokesman for Allianz would not say if the company was considering pulling out.
“There have been negotiations for a long time,” said Peter Lefkin, a senior vice president of Allianz’s United States operations, “but I don’t know the status of them.”
Steve Tisch, whose family owns half the Giants and who is the team’s chairman, has declined to comment about the months-long talks with Allianz. As a scion of a prominent family with strong ties to Jewish philanthropies, he may have strong opinions about how Allianz insured facilities at concentration camps like Auschwitz and betrayed thousands of its Jewish clients by giving the cash proceeds from their policies to the Nazis.
Are Tisch, John Mara, the Giants’ co-owner, and Woody Johnson, the Jets’ owner, willing to enter a public battle with Allianz’s critics? Survivors, their families and their advocates acknowledge that Allianz’s current management has nothing to do with Kurt Schmitt, the company’s chief executive who served in Hitler’s cabinet, or any of the company’s executives or policies in the 1930s and 1940s. But they believe Allianz has not come close to adequately compensating the victims of its complicity with the Nazis.
The last two days have no doubt been sobering for Allianz and the teams. But a minimal amount of vetting should have clued the teams into Allianz’s past.
Don’t they understand the risk of a sponsor being associated with Auschwitz?
Thane Rosenbaum, the author of “The Myth of Moral Justice: Why our Legal System Fails to Do What’s Right,” said Allianz’s intent in pursuing a deal with the Jets and Giants in a market with more survivors than any other in America is “only to have its name in neon, on what might become the most important football stadium in America. But the question is do they deserve it just because they can afford it?”
Rosenbaum, a law professor at Fordham University, said the moral taint of Allianz’s Nazi-era activities “never ends” and compels it to seek redemptive acts.
“I’d tell them that in addition to putting your name on the stadium, build a Holocaust memorial next door and write checks to Holocaust education,” he said,
But, he added, “If survivors feel revulsion at seeing the Allianz name on the stadium when they ride down Route 3, that’s the litmus test.”
With still-living survivors, the Holocaust is more contemporary than slavery, but no less resonant as an atrocity. Two financial institutions with arena naming rights apologized in 2005 for the slavery-era activities of banks that became parts of their empires.
Wachovia, the name on the arena where the Philadelphia 76ers and the Flyers play, apologized that two of its antecedents owned slaves, one of them taking ownership of them when customers defaulted on their loans. Several months before Bank One Ballpark became Chase Field, JPMorgan Chase apologized that two banks that are part of its history let customers use slaves as loan collateral.
E-mail: sportsbiz@nytimes.com
On the flipside, what can Allianz do to make up for their wrongs? Obviously their current CEO and management group had NOTHING to do with the Holocaust, yet they are still supposed to be responsible for their predecessors atrocities. My personal thought is that they should bow out gracefully and if they really want to sponsor a stadium to raise their company's awareness in the US, do it somewhere else.
MODs: This is on the line of Shark Pool and FFA, so no worries if you move it to the FFA.
Stadium Naming Meets Resistance
By RICHARD SANDOMIR
Published: September 11, 2008
In five years as the chairman of the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority, Carl Goldberg said he has never received as many calls and media requests as he has since Wednesday about the Jets’ and the Giants’ talks to sell the naming rights to their new stadium to Allianz, a German insurance company with historic ties to the Nazis.
“We’ve dealt with a lot of controversial issues, but this has struck a nerve in a wide range of communities,” Goldberg said by telephone on Thursday. “I’m not sure if the sports authority does or does not have the legal right to intercede.”
The sports authority, which has no financial role in the $1.6 billion stadium, can only reject a naming rights deal with gambling, alcohol, tobacco or firearms sponsors.
“There is some language,” Goldberg added, “which can be debated, that can be construed as a morality provision.” But he said he will not do anything proactively until the Giants and Jets come to him and say they intend to proceed with the Allianz deal.
Scott Stringer, the Manhattan borough president, sent letters to Jets and Giants executives on Thursday asking that they end their negotiations with Allianz, and to Goldberg, demanding that the authority “act boldly” to spurn any ties with Allianz.
Stringer wrote to Goldberg that Allianz’s actions to expiate its guilt or make financial restitution should have nothing to do with a rejection of its bid. The company’s postwar behavior, he added, cannot reduce the pain Holocaust survivors and their families would feel if they saw Allianz’s name on the stadium.
“The name of Allianz on that stadium will bring enormous harm to the public,” Stringer wrote. “In this case, the harm may be emotional, but it is no less real.”
The teams maintained a curious silence on Thursday about the status of the deal, and a spokesman for Allianz would not say if the company was considering pulling out.
“There have been negotiations for a long time,” said Peter Lefkin, a senior vice president of Allianz’s United States operations, “but I don’t know the status of them.”
Steve Tisch, whose family owns half the Giants and who is the team’s chairman, has declined to comment about the months-long talks with Allianz. As a scion of a prominent family with strong ties to Jewish philanthropies, he may have strong opinions about how Allianz insured facilities at concentration camps like Auschwitz and betrayed thousands of its Jewish clients by giving the cash proceeds from their policies to the Nazis.
Are Tisch, John Mara, the Giants’ co-owner, and Woody Johnson, the Jets’ owner, willing to enter a public battle with Allianz’s critics? Survivors, their families and their advocates acknowledge that Allianz’s current management has nothing to do with Kurt Schmitt, the company’s chief executive who served in Hitler’s cabinet, or any of the company’s executives or policies in the 1930s and 1940s. But they believe Allianz has not come close to adequately compensating the victims of its complicity with the Nazis.
The last two days have no doubt been sobering for Allianz and the teams. But a minimal amount of vetting should have clued the teams into Allianz’s past.
Don’t they understand the risk of a sponsor being associated with Auschwitz?
Thane Rosenbaum, the author of “The Myth of Moral Justice: Why our Legal System Fails to Do What’s Right,” said Allianz’s intent in pursuing a deal with the Jets and Giants in a market with more survivors than any other in America is “only to have its name in neon, on what might become the most important football stadium in America. But the question is do they deserve it just because they can afford it?”
Rosenbaum, a law professor at Fordham University, said the moral taint of Allianz’s Nazi-era activities “never ends” and compels it to seek redemptive acts.
“I’d tell them that in addition to putting your name on the stadium, build a Holocaust memorial next door and write checks to Holocaust education,” he said,
But, he added, “If survivors feel revulsion at seeing the Allianz name on the stadium when they ride down Route 3, that’s the litmus test.”
With still-living survivors, the Holocaust is more contemporary than slavery, but no less resonant as an atrocity. Two financial institutions with arena naming rights apologized in 2005 for the slavery-era activities of banks that became parts of their empires.
Wachovia, the name on the arena where the Philadelphia 76ers and the Flyers play, apologized that two of its antecedents owned slaves, one of them taking ownership of them when customers defaulted on their loans. Several months before Bank One Ballpark became Chase Field, JPMorgan Chase apologized that two banks that are part of its history let customers use slaves as loan collateral.
E-mail: sportsbiz@nytimes.com
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