Kill them all. Let God sort them out.
We knew a guy who used to wear a T-shirt with that slogan. He was ahead of his time.
Burger King is running a new flight of ads promoting its chicken fries. A metal band thrashes through a song glorifying the fries; the band members wear stylized bird heads.
The fake band's name? Coq Roq.
Yeah, sure, eighth-grade humor -- "heh-heh, he said 'cock.'" The world's full of it, we're sick of it, and we're not even secretly happy that a word we used in high school to denote "bad-ass" is back in style (though really, did cock ever go out of style?).
We are sick of being offended, however, by people who are easily offended.
Burger King yanked a section from CoqRoq.com that featured Polaroids of groupies with slogans such as "Groupies love the Coq." Try to hit the message boards and you're likely to get a "too busy, try back later" screen.
Turns out some people were offended by the Coq. They complained, Advertising Age picked up the story, BK went all hinkey and voila -- no more love for the Coq.
"Just the name Coq Roq in general is offensive to families," author Aliza Pilar Sherman told Advertising Age. "I can't imagine if parents of a smaller child saw this. They'd say they don't want their child exposed to this. Where do we as responsible individuals draw the line? Of course there's freedom of speech but does that mean Burger King should be perpetuating stereotypes, negative attitudes and demeaning behavior to the market?"
Blah blah blah. A BK flack claimed "malfunctions in the Flash and XML programming" caused the pro-Coq messages to make it to light. She was too afraid to just say it: Yes, the campaign talks about Coq, and we know you know we're playing with the word "cock," and sure sure, some people with tight asses are going to pucker up even more. Guess they're going to miss out on our hot Coq. Thank you for coming.
Instead she blames Flash for her Coq problems -- a delicious irony for those with freaky minds, and we are glad you exist, but your numbers are dwindling and you may soon go the way of the Rodriguez Ring-necked parakeet, another extinct cock.
Too many people have too-thin skins. Seems like everyone's walking on eggshells, too afraid to offend.
Don't want to be offended? Live in a cave and bitch at the bats.
2 comments:
"Live in a cave and bitch at the bats."
Umm... Yeh you said, "bitch"... let me check, I might be offended.
Don't be so offended that some people were offended. Lighten up! Anyway, the offended people actually didn't approach Ad Age, they approached us. The writer herself was mildly offended so was looking for some other takes on the topic. The article, of course, used only one quote from me - not taken out of context per se, but certainly all the things I said were not included so you could think that I'm thin skinned. Heck, what do you know? The reality is that I used to work for rock bands like Metallica and Def Leppard and watched how that culture and the stereotyping, demeaning, misogynistic behavior not only hurt the young women who were fans (groupies), but the young men who worshipped the bands AND the band members themselves. Also, since when are intelligent/thinking people NOT offended by the garbage that corporations and ad agencies shove down our throats? You'd have to live in a cave to not be offended. The question is when/where do we draw the line and when do we speak out about the crap that is out there? Speaking out about it, pointing it out, doesn't make us thin skinned. Just angry as hell and we ain't gonna take it no more. Whatever. I did think the campaign for BK was well done, I definitely saw the humor in chicken metal (almost better than Spinal Tap), but that polaroid of young women who "Love the Coq" was a bit over the top. And yes, I, too, cracked up reading the company's party line. Flash my Ass.
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