I guess it's not enough bombing Kentucky Fried Chicken or trashing the local mink ranch
We have a lot of sympathy for the cause that the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals seek to promote. We don’t have much sympathy for their increasingly goofy attention-seeking antics.
The latest dustup the animal rights nonprofit has created involves their attempt to get NBC to air a completely inappropriate ad during the Super Bowl, and then to complain when the network rejected the softcore porn.
The ad, featuring women in bras and panties getting extremely busy with some vegetables, was rejected after NBC deemed the content too racy, according to an e-mail from NBC that PETA made available to msnbc.com. A network spokesman did not immediately return a call seeking comment.
PETA
(Yes, msnbc.com is a joint venture of Microsoft and NBC Universal, but that doesn’t influence our editorial decisions, about this ad or any other.)
Let’s face it: It’s extremely unlikely a network would air an ad like this during the Super Bowl, unless they wanted every mom and dad in America to blanket them with angry e-mails. Not only that, but most people who created an ad like this would understand that sex with vegetables, while perhaps acceptable for late night television, is not typical midday fodder, even on Super Bowl Sunday.
A spokesman for PETA, Michael McGraw, said the company was surprised the ad was rejected, and that they didn’t think it was more risqué than other commercials that have aired during the Super Bowl. The company has instead put the ad on its Web site, along with documentation about the rejection.
It’s true that Super Bowl advertisers have regularly tried to push the envelope on what is acceptable on Super Bowl Sunday, but this one strikes us as pushing further than most.
It’s one thing for PETA to shock people with videos of people blatantly mistreating animals, to draw attention to the very real cause of animal abuse. It’s another thing to create an extremely steamy video, and then complain about their supposedly unfair treatment.
Instead of making us think about the plight of animals, it made us think that some people will do anything to get attention.
We have a lot of sympathy for the cause that the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals seek to promote. We don’t have much sympathy for their increasingly goofy attention-seeking antics.
The latest dustup the animal rights nonprofit has created involves their attempt to get NBC to air a completely inappropriate ad during the Super Bowl, and then to complain when the network rejected the softcore porn.
The ad, featuring women in bras and panties getting extremely busy with some vegetables, was rejected after NBC deemed the content too racy, according to an e-mail from NBC that PETA made available to msnbc.com. A network spokesman did not immediately return a call seeking comment.
(Yes, msnbc.com is a joint venture of Microsoft and NBC Universal, but that doesn’t influence our editorial decisions, about this ad or any other.)
Let’s face it: It’s extremely unlikely a network would air an ad like this during the Super Bowl, unless they wanted every mom and dad in America to blanket them with angry e-mails. Not only that, but most people who created an ad like this would understand that sex with vegetables, while perhaps acceptable for late night television, is not typical midday fodder, even on Super Bowl Sunday.
A spokesman for PETA, Michael McGraw, said the company was surprised the ad was rejected, and that they didn’t think it was more risqué than other commercials that have aired during the Super Bowl. The company has instead put the ad on its Web site, along with documentation about the rejection.
It’s true that Super Bowl advertisers have regularly tried to push the envelope on what is acceptable on Super Bowl Sunday, but this one strikes us as pushing further than most.
It’s one thing for PETA to shock people with videos of people blatantly mistreating animals, to draw attention to the very real cause of animal abuse. It’s another thing to create an extremely steamy video, and then complain about their supposedly unfair treatment.
Instead of making us think about the plight of animals, it made us think that some people will do anything to get attention.
