ght off, and they were convinced that if they appealed to the better part of our character, they could persuade us that they were right. For example, the group refused to allow a distinction between the hard-core pro- gramming of the Hot Network-which literally was an endless loop of people engaging in various sex acts with little pretense of a story line-and the tamer fare of the Playboy Channel. The group brought about a dozen people to our second meeting who told vivid stories of their past "addiction" to pornography. Arm- strong and I were genuinely moved as these people detailed how their compulsion had ruined their marriages and their lives, but their an- guished stories didn't have the desired effect. While I still opposed running the Hot Network because it was basically at odds with our brand values, Armstrong and I felt no more responsible for feeding sexual addiction than the people who make Ho-Ho's might feel at a meeting of Overeaters Anonymous. On the contrary, it reinforced our determination to develop even more effective parental controls. But the alliance seemed to consider the dialogue constructive, and, while it occasionally threatened to take some form of action, it never did. We will never know if the group held back because we engaged it in dialogue, but I feel sure that this contributed. On the day we an- nounced the sale of our cable systems to Comcast, I called the alli- ance's executive director to tell him that we were "getting out of the pornography business." Rainbow/PUSH Some groups, however, see a big company as simply a long lever they can use to lift their cause. Jesse Jackson's Rainbow/PUSH Coalition didn't really know what it wanted when Jackson first contacted us fol- lowing the announcement of our plans to acquire TCI. It just knew that the required regulatory approval created an opening for it. Tough Calls The letter that Jackson sent had a total of ten questions, ranging from the company's ethnic diversity to its banking relationships. Rather than ignore the letter or send a 