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Controversies
Jingolympics
"Ching Chong Chinaman" Pose Spreads To South America
Astoundingly, even more Olympians have been photographed in the "Slanty-eyed Asian" pose that caused an international uproar when the Spanish Olympic Basketball team did it just last week. Spain argued that hey, just because their basketball team and their national tennis team did the slit-eye, it didn't mean everyone should pick on them. And maybe they were right! Because now some of Argentina's female Olympic soccer players have been photographed in the same pose. Can there be a memo issued about this or something (Text: "Don't do.")? Full photo below: More »
Jingolympics
Spain Outraged At Media Twisting Its Athletes' "Ching Chong Chinaman" Fun
Here was the Spanish Olympic basketball team, minding its own business by posing for a full-page newspaper ad in the "Slanty-eyed Chinaman" pose, which, as all Spanish basketball players know, is funny and endearing. Then the scurrilous English-speaking media goes and writes a news story about it, twisting it into some sort of "racist" gesture. Despite the fact that Spanish athletes have many Chinamen friends! Spanish nationalist outrage has risen up at the foreign misinterpretations of this widely practiced gesture of eye-based friendship among Spanish athletic teams. So it's only fitting that the (English) reporter who broke the story has now had to write a groveling piece defending his decision to cover this Spanish leisure activity: More »
Controversies
It was quite an embarrassment for the nation of Spain yesterday when an ad surfaced showing their entire national Olympic basketball team posing in the "Slanty-eyed Asian" position, pulling their eyelids back. We imagine the photo shoot was followed by several minutes of mimed karate moves and Enter The Dragon reenactments, only adding to the awkwardness. So the entire nation of China has been waiting expectantly for an apology. And today they got...outrage that anyone would think Spain is racist! Why, some of their closest friends are from China or somewhere like that!
More »
Some Of Spain's Best Friends Are Asian!
It was quite an embarrassment for the nation of Spain yesterday when an ad surfaced showing their entire national Olympic basketball team posing in the "Slanty-eyed Asian" position, pulling their eyelids back. We imagine the photo shoot was followed by several minutes of mimed karate moves and Enter The Dragon reenactments, only adding to the awkwardness. So the entire nation of China has been waiting expectantly for an apology. And today they got...outrage that anyone would think Spain is racist! Why, some of their closest friends are from China or somewhere like that!
More »
advertising
The L Word's Way To Play For Pay
THe L Word doesn't show any ads, because it's on Showtime. But now the show popular with lesbians and non-lesbians alike has done something that will either become the future standard of television, or destroy the show forever: it has given its writer and creator the power to "control all brand integration" in the show. That means the writer, rather than the ad people, will be selling the product placements and determining how they play out. And it may become the de facto place for bad companies looking to make sweet $300,000 advertising love with the gay audience: More »
advertising
PETA: Speaking Of Cannibal Bus Murders...
PETA is an enigma. Is that the right word? What I'm trying to say is, they behave like crackheads. While their primary cause (animal rights) is good, they suffer from a weird celebrity fascination, knee-jerk political stridency, and a love for nasty fake meat. They also try to pass off nudity as philosophy. And yes, PETA, we know you love provocative ads. But using last week's Greyhound Bus Cannibal Psycho Murders as a news peg is not the wisest way to win supporters: More »
Public relations
Running For President On $5 A Day
In the (very near) future, presidential candidates will have national advertising campaign budgets of about $637 or so. They'll just make a few very low-tech ads full of stock photos and slanderous lies about their opponents, run the ad once at 3 a.m. on a small local news channel in the Midwest, and then let the news networks swoop in and show the ad in its entirety hundreds of times for free, repeating all of its slanderous lies each time. That's basically been John McCain's strategy so far, and it's working like a charm! More »
media
Wendy Williams Quickly Corners Sex-Talking TV Market
Whoa, did you know that the somewhat maddening hip hop radio queen and penis-talking daytime TV host Wendy Williams "stands about 6-foot-4 in heels, not counting her sometimes formidable helmet of hair"? That is one tall, tall gossipeuse. And though she's succeeded in getting some good ratings by doing things like battling the evil Omarosa on live TV, Wendy seems to be having a hard time convincing advertisers and publicists that her penis-friendly show is the place for them: More »
Controversies
Gays Scare Snickers Into Pulling Mr. T Ad
The PC joke police are steamrolling testosterone-based advertising! First Nike had to pull its "Air Stab" sneakers out of stores in the UK because people thought they were encouraging unrestrained knife crime. Not a week later, Nike found itself under assault by gays and their internet sympathizers over an ad showing a basketball guy hanging his nuts in another guys' face, with the slogan "That Ain't Right." And now the rising pro-homo chorus has forced Snickers to pull its ad in which Mr. T shoots a speed walker (and gay caricature) with a gatling gun while screaming, "Get some nuts!" Oh, some people get insulted by every little thing. Couldn't they just have digitally inserted a thought balloon on the guy saying "NO HOMO"? Watch the too hot for PC ad yourself, after the jump: More »
Public relations
Nike Pulls 'Air Stab,' UK Crime Rates Plummet
Poor Nike just cannot catch a break these days. First all the gays and their blog commenter followers got upset about Nike's new ads featuring a guy with his nuts in another guy's face, which some say are homophobic. (Nike's ad agency would like you all to STFU with your whining about that, BTW). And this controversy is distracting them from the process of pulling all their "Air Stab" shoes out of UK stores because the god damn Brits can't stop knifing each other! More »
Public relations
Why Does A Flack Want To "Help" A Reporter?
A flack named Peter Shankman (who enjoys getting tased) has built up quite a little reporter-helping service! Through a free website, Helpareporter.com, Shankman takes in queries from reporters in search of sources for random stories, and then sends those queries out to the PR world, who—coincidentally—like to be featured sources. Everybody wins! Except for the other reporter-source website called Profnet, which does the same thing, but charges a big fee to flacks to participate: More »
Controversies
Does Nike Hate Gays? Or Do Gays Hate Basketball?
Nike's new ad campaign for its Hyperdunk shoes features a series of pictures of basketball players getting dunked on in what's considered the worst way possible: the dunker dangling off the rim, his balls dangling in the face of the man being dunk-ee. They all have dynamic slogans like "That Ain't Right!" The company has been plastering them around NYC's most famous streetball meccas, like Harlem (home to The Rucker) and West 4th St. Their rollout coincides with a big foofaraw this week (which some critics say is stupid oversensitivity) over whether the ad industry is making blatantly homophobic ads. All of which raises the question: Are these Nike ads a new low in homophobic advertising? Or do the gays just not understand basketball? More »
controversies
Innocuous College Soap Enrages Nerdy Frat Alumni
A tipster points us toward an online petition moving to have the ABC Family show Greek canceled. Which is silly because it's a good show—a Thing We Actually Like! It's essentially a bunch of members from the nerdiest frats across the land who claim that the show misrepresents fraternity and sorority life on college campuses as nothing more than drinking, fucking, and begrudging community service. If anyone can explain to me how it's anything other than that (other than the occasional circle jerk opportunity and connections-related job getter), I'm open to hearing it. Read some of the best enraged comments from those who've e-signed, after the jump. More »
Public relations
'Guido' War
Staten Island—all of it!—is threatening to boycott Belmar, NJ because the mayor there made derogatory remarks about "guidos," the overtanned, hair-gelled, well-muscled gentlemen who I say are just fine, so that I don't get jumped next time I go to the gym. "The mayor should watch his f- - -ing mouth!" one Staten Island resident told the Post. Ha, right you are, my friend! Do you care to read the entire press release about this grievous insult from Staten Island Good Neighborhood Association president John "JE" Englebert, for some reason? Then click through and do so! [UPDATE: And a sample of the mayor's original gentle insults!]: More »
Controversies
Kanye West Does Not Need Any Fools Helping With His Blog
Some internet person made the outrageous assertion that hip hop superstar Kanye West might be using some hired help to keep up with the posting on his blog. The rapper has a "ghost blogger" named Marcus Troy, they say. Kanye will be damned if he sits back and allows his fans to believe that he does not personally type every rant and find every photo of oddly shaped foreign water bottles all by himself! Ghost blogger? Psht! Kanye has posted irrefutable evidence that his blog is a one man operation: More »
advertising
Anti-Groping Ads Too Sexy For You Horndogs
Just like giving out condoms makes kids have sex and giving out clean needles turns upright citizens into junkies, the government must protect us from public service ads more likely to destroy us than to save us. Concerned about all the horny bastards rubbing up against women on subways, New York City had an anti-groping ad campaign ready to be rolled out to the sicko public (that's you). But they had to scratch that. These ads would just set you perverts off even more! More »
Gregorius Nekschot
Stupid Netherlands Turns Xenophobic Cartoonist Into Hero
Here's where we play Goofus & Gallant, European nations edition. Gallant Denmark stood up in favor of the rights of publishers when those stupid, mediocre cartoons about the prophet Muhammed caused worldwide outrage and riots a couple years back. Goofus Netherlands, on the other hand, recently threw a cartoonist in jail for drawing cartoons that might be offensive to Muslims. By all accounts the cartoonist, "Gregorius Nekschot," is offensive to Muslims. That makes his arrest no less phenomenally stupid. More »
Controversies
