Pull the P.C. Plug

[Variance]

-Variance

February 16, 2007

I don’t know who I’m irritated at more: Advocacy groups that whine about automotive commercials that are meant to be entertaining because it might hurt the feelings of their little constituencies or the automakers that turn to pansies and pull the ads to avoid hurting their feelings.

Here’s a message to both sides: Grow a pair.

Goodbye Cruel Commercials

The recent crybabies have been suicide prevention groups. Just today, Volkswagen announced that they would pull a recent new ad featuring a guy preparing to leap off of a tall building to his demise until he hears the announcement that you can get three VW’s for under $17,000. The group Suicide Prevention Network USA was the one pleading to Volkswagen to pull the ad. At first VW stated that the ad would remain on the air but they quickly pu... er... -- wussed out.

And who could forget the infamous GM robot ad that premiered during the Super Bowl? If you have, the premise is simple: Robot works in GM factory, robot drops screw, robot gets canned, robot tries to find other work, robot fails, robot becomes depressed, robot stands on bridge, robot jumps off, robot wakes up, robot is relived. Innocent enough, right? Not to the fine gents over at the National Alliance on Mental Illness. Like VW, GM at first stood up to the nutjobs and like VW, GM later relented and stated they would revise the ad to remove the “suicide” scene.

Way to stand up to adversity guys. Decisions like this really don’t speak well for your integrity. I’d have slightly more respect for you if you said from the outset “Ok, we’ll pull the ads” instead of pulling this flip-flop garbage. How am I supposed to feel about a company that bends to the will of a group of people that are obviously not representative of the average American public? I’m willing to bet you lost the respect of more people by caving than leaving the ad up.

Rally Against the P.C. Patrol

I really have to say I am quite sick of the massive political correctness movement that is infecting advertisement. These groups claim that ads like this make light of suicide and were callous in nature. Really? I’m pretty sure GM and VW marketing execs didn’t sit around thinking: “Who the hell cares what suicide-minded people think about our ad? When they off themselves, who’s gonna bitch about it?” I’m pretty sure they thought their ads were simply amusing and expected the other I’m guessing about 98% of the American public that aren’t complete pansies to feel the same.

People are so worried about offending others these days that you can’t say much of anything anymore. Now, I’m not saying we should all become insensitive to everyone, flipping off old ladies at random, calling people every racist name we can think of and burning various religious symbols. I’m just saying that some people really need to grow a spine and/or a sense of humor. I think the last thing on a suicidal persons mind is how much the GM commercial offended them and I don’t think it’s very likely it’ll push them over edge, either. (No NAMI, I’m not apologizing for that.)

The FCC babies the American viewing audience enough; we don’t need a group of wannabes trying to catch what they “missed”. Televisions are made with channel and power buttons for a reason.

[A Horse With No Name]

Alas people are afraid of thinking...being P.C. means that you don't have to think.

Chris