When it comes to the wild and zany world of special-interest groups attempting to protect “America’s families” from all the so-called “filth” and “trash” of the mass media, a special prize needs to go out to the One Million Moms organization. An adjunct organization of the American Family Association—a rabidly anti-gay evangelical group that had once been correctly labeled as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center—it’s a collection of nutty extremists who have somehow managed to make headlines recently for the various (spectacularly) failed attempts at influencing popular entertainment.
Their latest attempt at imposing their bizarre value system on mainstream culture is their call to boycott Burger King for their use of the word “damn” in a new Impossible Whopper ad. You can check out one of the stories on the kerfuffle right here. Apparently they seem to believe that “damn” is a curse word that will corrupt “impressionable” young children. How exactly the corruption will happen is not explained. What form the “corruption” will take is not explained either. So an impressionable youngster saying the word “damn” will lead exactly to what? Will that impressionable little tyke now turn into an ax-murderer? Maybe he’ll join a gang? Become a drug dealer? Not certain, and the million moms don’t seem to have any clear answers among them. I mean, maybe one or two of those million moms might have been able to elaborate.
Now these people seem to be gluttons for public punishment. Some might recall that just before Christmas the Million Moms called for a boycott of the Hallmark Channel for airing an ad that featured a lesbian couple’s wedding and their kiss. Although the Hallmark Channel at first cravenly caved to these yoyos, the channel soon realized that their ratings and business would be hurt much more severely by the backlash from…well, normal, tolerant, decent human beings who, luckily, make up a greater percentage of the American population than the members of homophobic fringe religious fanatics do. So then if the Hallmark Channel boycott wasn’t an embarrassing enough failure for the Moms, they now move on to something as idiotic as this Burger King “damn” boycott.
So I’m certain that Burger King will not lose too much sleep over the angry Moms and not give in to this silly request to change their commercial…that is if they know what’s good for their business. I’m sure they wouldn’t want to be known as the second business to cave in to the demands of cultural terrorists.
Oh, and one more note on the issue of cursing and its effects. What research exists on the subject seems to suggest that those who curse regularly in order to vent their frustrations in a stressful situation might actually possess a higher level of intelligence. Check out this article right here. This doesn’t surprise me since cultural conservative extremists like the American Family Association, One Million Moms, or the Parents Television Council appear to have IQs that make Flat Earth believers look like MENSA members.
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