Abortion foes breathe life into Pro-Choice ad

Abortion is illegal in Poland. To no one’s surprise this doesn’t mean abortions aren’t performed there, it’s just moved them to the back alleys – unless, of course, you’re rich. Or maybe not. A pro-abortion group has been up hanging posters which claim it’s cheaper (and less dangerous) to leave the country than to get one in country. And they did it using the MasterCard “Priceless” trope.

Plane ticket to England – 300 zloty. 

Accommodation – 240 zloty.

Abortion in a public clinic – 0 zloty.

Relief after a procedure carried out in decent conditions – priceless.

There’s a line at the bottom which reads: "For everything, you pay less than an underground abortion in Poland." (FYI: $1 = 2.81 zloty)

Some of the Brits have their knickers in a twist and claim this promotes “abortion tourism.” (Headlines like “NOW POLES GET FREE ABORTIONS ON NHS,” make me suspect the press has manufactured at least some of the alleged outrage.)

Several stories from UK news organizations include the following claim (or something much like it): “Thousands of Polish women travel to Britain for an abortion each year, taking advantage of the reciprocal agreement for the provision of free medical care under EU laws.” However the closest any of the reports come to citing the basis for this claim is by identifying it as coming from “A Polish source.”

A church publication called The Trumpet says, “A report by the Polish Federation for Women and Family Planning stated that 10,000 Polish women had abortions in Britain in 2007—costing the National Health Service (nhs) between ₤5 and ₤10 million.” Oddly, the most recent report in English on the group’s website is dated 2002. Also it is hard for me to understand why a Polish group in favor of liberalization of the abortion laws would have calculated the cost of all this to the NHS. But what do I know?

Even if somehow these statistics were true, it means 2007 was a banner year. The UK’s Office of National Statistics said only 30 Polish women took this course of action in 2008.

The only truly priceless thing here is the free publicity all this has given to SROM, the group behind the ad. Hard to see how else a bunch of street posters in Lodz would be making international headlines.

Magazine industry spends millions preaching to the choir

From my blog at EmediaVitals:

On a list of industries with too much money the leader would clearly be banking followed probably by oil. What about magazine publishing? While it is certainly ahead of typewriters (repair & manufacture of), I don’t think it would crack the top 1000. Despite this, the industry has collectively decided it is time to waste some of this precious resource. Thus the just-announced multimillion-dollar ad campaign touting the "power of print."

The campaign, funded by five leading publishers, seeks to convince people that “magazines remain an effective advertising medium in the age of the Internet because of the depth and lasting quality of print, compared with the ephemeral nature of much of the Web’s content.”

And how are they going to get this message across? “Nearly 1,400 pages of the ads will be sprinkled through magazines including People, Vogue and Ladies’ Home Journal this year.”

Let me get this right – you’re going to tell magazine readers that reading magazines is a good thing? Maybe it’s just me but I’m pretty sure they already know. Aren’t the people you want to reach the ones who aren’t trying to discern the difference between the ads and the articles in GQ?

Click HERE for more

Weekly round-up of business and idiocy news

• Citi – which loaned billions on crap mortgages – terminates account of gay social networking site because of "objectionable content”: And then changed its mind when the feces hit. “This situation had nothing to do with the content of his web site and any comments by our staff to the contrary were incorrect; we are reviewing what happened.” (BusinessInsider)
• Ad banned because of Miss Piggy’s cleavage: COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — Puppet cleavage has been ruled out for advertising posters in Colorado Springs bus shelters. Lamar Advertising rejected posters for a touring production of the Broadway show "Avenue Q" because they show the cleavage of a fuzzy pink puppet. (WaPo)
• Wingnuts see Obama/Islam overtone in new Federal agency logo: “The conservative blogosphere is abuzz about the new logo of the US Missile Defense Agency, which they say looks suspiciously similar to both the Obama campaign logo and the crescent moon typically seen on Islamic flags.”(RawStory)
• Brazil government says Paris Hilton ad demeans women: Brazil’s Secretariat for Women’s Affairs wants a beer commercial starring the hotel heiress, model and actor off the air. Brazil’s regulations say beer commercials cannot treat women as overtly sensual objects. "It’s an ad that devalues women — in particular, blond women," according to a spokeswoman for the Women’s Secretariat who said it received numerous complaints. (AP) (How much did Paris pay to have someone get her back into the news?)
• Apple bans & then brings back some boob apps:  Wobble’s developer Jon Atherton has been restored to the App Store after complaining about being booted from it. “This time, there’s no suggestive images or language in the app’s marketing materials. But you can still make boobs wobble — the app’s original point — if you bring your own artwork. Wobble simply had to remove illustrations featuring a silhouette of a naked woman from its app.” (BusinessInsider)
• Man sues Royals after team mascot hits him with a hot dog: (This is my favorite lede of the week) “If there’s anything more American than shooting and throwing encased meats into a throng of loud and hungry people, it’s silly-sounding lawsuits that make for good headlines on Internet websites.” (YahooSports)

NBC CEO’s campaign slogan: Proven incompetence!

If you think the selection of clowns in DC couldn’t get any worse, guess again. NBC CEO Jeff Zucker – the guy who gave us Lenovision and nearly killed his network and its affiliates in the process – says he would “certainly look at” running for political office.

Speaking on the Joe Scarborough show, Jeff “10% Of Americans Are Unemployed and I’m Not?” Zucker said he would be good because

"I do think that there would be a benefit to having people who have run businesses in office — who have a sense of how to how to get something across the finish line, make hard decisions that actually everybody can get behind … I think we just have to get the cynicism behind us and we have to get some things accomplished and I think people who can do that would be very helpful and beneficial.”

“We have to get some things accomplished and I think people who can do that would be very helpful and beneficial.” I heartily concur with Mr. Z on this! If he would care to suggest someone with those qualities I would welcome it.

Between him and Carly Fiorina, it feels like politics is what you do after you’ve tried to wreck your company.

Who could possibly have seen the banking disaster coming?

What was the theory behind the Glass-Steagall Act? Foremost, it was meant to restore a certain sobriety to American finance. In the 1920s, the banker had gone from a person of sober rectitude to a huckster who encouraged people to gamble on risky stocks and bonds. As [chief congressional counsel Ferdinand] Pecora noted, small investors identified banks with security, so that National City salesmen “came to them clothed with all the authority and prestige of the magic name ‘National City.’” It was also argued that the union of deposit and securities banking created potential conflicts of interest. Banks could take bad loans, repackage them as bonds, and fob them off on investors as National City had done with Latin American loans. They could even lend the investors money to buy the bonds. A final problem with the banks’ brokerage affiliates was that they forced the Federal Reserve System to stand behind both depositors and speculators. If a securities bank failed, the Fed might need to rescue it to protect the parent bank. In other words, the government might have to protect speculators to save depositors.

– Ron Chernow, The House of Morgan, 1990, pg. 375. (Emphasis added)

 

The repeal of Glass-Steagall was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Clinton in 1999.

The arguments made to repeal the act were primarily

1. Depository institutions will now operate in “deregulated” financial markets in which distinctions between loans, securities, and deposits are not well drawn. They are losing market shares to securities firms that are not so strictly regulated, and to foreign financial institutions operating without much restriction from the Act.
2. Conflicts of interest can be prevented by enforcing legislation against them, and by separating the lending and credit functions through forming distinctly separate subsidiaries of financial firms.
3. The securities activities that depository institutions are seeking are both low-risk by their very nature, and would reduce the total risk of organizations offering them – by diversification.
4. In much of the rest of the world, depository institutions operate simultaneously and successfully in both banking and securities markets. Lessons learned from their experience can be applied to our national financial structure and regulation

Emphasis added

GM is so inept it can’t even sell a Hummer

It took some time but Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machines Co. finally realized what a bad idea buying Hummer would be. Yesterday the Chinese company announced it was pulling its offer to purchase the brand. From the start, the attempt to dump Hummer has been another testament to the company’s ineptitude. GM began trying to sucker someone into paying for the brand in June of 2008 – when gas was averaging $4.10 a gallon.

The Hummer’s greatest success may be as a metaphor for the past decade. It was a bloated, self-indulgent vehicle with no purpose other than to say, “Look how much debt I can take on just to show off how much debt I can take on.”* It proclaimed a belief that markets never go bad, in this case that gas will always be cheap. However it isn’t much of a stretch to say a similar belief permeated the minds who thought real estate could only gain in value.

The Atlantic is floating the scary idea that Hummer may not yet be dead and that someone may yet come along and revive the monster. Get the pitchforks and torches! Let us storm the castle and cut off the beast’s head and drive a stake through its transmission! For capitalism’s sake, follow me!

See also Hummer, slang meaning of.

*I know there are farmers and others who actually used the damn thing for work purposes, they are exempt from this metaphor.

Montblanc regrets “honoring” Gandhi with $24K fountain pen

Either Montblanc’s execs have a brilliant sense of irony or they’re complete idiots, you decide.

Whichever is the case, they have “unconditionally apologized” to an Indian court about it – at least until the court rules on whether the company can continue to sell the pen. The pen was marketed as a way of honoring 140th birthday of the brilliant spokesman for the poor.

What, you may ask, justifies the $24,000 cost of this ink delivery system?

The gold and silver limited edition pen includes an engraving of Gandhi and comes with an eight-meter golden thread that can be wound around the pen, representing the spindle and cotton Gandhi used to weave simple cloth.

Montblanc made only 241 of the handmade pens, one for each mile Gandhi walked in his famous march against salt taxes in 1930. And you thought they were insensitive!

It should be noted that the company did think of the needs of the less affluent consumer when producing this pen. They are also offering ballpoint and rollerball versions for a mere $3000 per.

Buzzword bingo face-off: iPad vs. Google Buzz

What’s the best jargon generator, Google Buzz or iPad?

Nobody actually knows what impact either of these technologies will have, but everybody still wants to say something about them. Here’s a totally unscientific sampling from a bunch of blogs highlighting the best jargon describing each of them.

The iPad is being called a game changer, a new platform, a multipurpose e-reader, and an enterprise opportunity especially now that it has greenlighted VOIP. (That last was actually in a headline.) It also has accessibility out-of-the-box.

Can we all agree on a single use for the box and what is outside it? Did accessibility out-of-the-box come from thinking outside of the box? Which box are we using here and what was in it to begin with? Do cereal or shoes have accessibility out-of-the-box?

The best iPad-related jargon sentence: “Apple may well have zeroed in on the inflection point for a new piece of consumer technology.”

Despite the iPad buzz, Google’s new Buzz wins the jargon prize based on a single blog post from Poynter’s Will Sullivan. This is one of the most astounding single-sentence paragraphs I have ever read:

Based on the YouTube video explanation, Buzz is kind of a Facebook-foursquare-Twitter-FriendFeed competitor, but could be much more than the sum of the Google products they’re integrating with it, including Google Profiles, Google Gmail (its Contact list gets integrated automatically), Google Picasa photos (it can also incorporate feeds from other multimedia tools such as Flickr and YouTube) …

Read the rest and increase my page view count by clicking here and going to my blog at EmediaVitals.

Robin Hood nabbed for ID theft and more

Why aren’t you reading The Obscure Store and Reading Room? It’s where all the best stories can be found. Here are three recent ones:

• Man with real name of Robin Hood charged with identity theft

• Man named Ronald McDonald arrested for marijuana possession

• Man beaten with high-heel during Waffle House Valentine’s date

Man has had a hard time.

Medical-themed restaurants get all malpractice on each other

The fact that “hospital food” is synonymous with inedible hasn’t stopped the opening of two different medical-themed restaurants. Taking the theming even further – one is suing the other for malpractice.

Heart Stoppers Sports Grill in Del Ray, Fla. — which opened in December –  is being sued by Heart Attack Grill in Chandler, Ariz., over who has the right to have waitresses dress like “nurses” and “decorate the premises with a heart defibrillator and a dialysis machine. Make the tables look like wheelchairs, put salt and pepper in pill bottles, and present the bill in a plastic first-aid kit.”

The menu idea associated with this (and I use the word idea very loosely) are things like Chili Chest Pain Fries and The Heart Stopper, a 3-pound burger. At the Heart Stoppers, the menu warns "consumption of our food will definitely lead to obesity" and there is a standing offer of free food to anyone over 350 pounds.

"I’m 90 pounds away from eating for free," said a half-joking, 260-pound Dan Pagano, who was finishing up his $8.25 half-pound burger and fries at Heart Stoppers. Pagano, who writes service orders at a nearby car dealership, has been eating at Heart Stoppers twice a week since it opened.

Lawyers for Heart Attack claim they are “the originator of the medically themed hamburger grill and restaurant.” (Is that really something to brag about?) They also say there are 30 similarities between the two restaurants including the EKG heart monitor imagery on the signage to the free food offer for customers over 350 pounds.

Heart Attack fare includes the Singe & Double-bypass burgers and Flatliner Fries™.

Can we health care reform both of these places out of business before I get sick?

Canada dealers selling Olympic brand drugs

Organized crime groups in British Columbia have gotten the true message of the Olympic™®© spirit: Money. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (DOORIGHT!) says groups from as far away as Nova Scotia are selling ecstasy pills bearing the Olympic logo. So far three people have been arrested.

"This typifies the marketing savvy used by organized crime groups to attract young customers by incorporating brightly coloured modern pop-culture symbols,” said the RCMP’s Craig Foley.

Vancouver’s Olympic organizing committee has vigorously pursued unlicensed use of the Olympic symbols in the past. A spokesman said the committee was aware of the seizure by Vancouver police and would continue to be vigilant in monitoring trademark infringements.

The lesson to be learned here: Buy the right to be the official illicit drugs of the Olympics™®© BEFORE you hit the streets.

My kind of law firm

 

I don’t know who these people are or whether or not they’re any good but their ads are GENIUS!

 

Air New Zealand is early leader for worst marketing of 2010

It’s only January 25th but Air New Zealand has already launched and crashed a major marketing campaign.

The campaign was based around the “mating habits” of Kiwi cougars (older women seeking younger men, for those of you lucky enough not to know).

I really, really can’t top the News of Australia’s description:

In the Discovery Channel-style documentary clip complete with David Attenborough-esque voiceover, a so-called cougar is shown "starving itself on sparse vegetation during the day then hunting large slabs of meat at night" by stalking a young man at a bar. Despite the man’s attempts to ward off the woman’s advances, the cougar has "not tasted fresh meat for days" and drags her prey to an inner-city apartment. In the ad, the women, aged in their 30s, 40s and 50s, routinely prey on men in their 20s, many who "pretend to be gay" to avoid them, says the voiceover. The promotion encourages women 35-plus to send in photographs of themselves out on the town with their "cougar mates" to go in the draw for a deal including a flight and ticket to a sporting event.

The campaign was pulled last week after taking heavy fire from rape prevention groups who said it belittled the experience of male rape survivors while at the same time managing to be offensive to women. Now that’s the kind of twofer you don’t see every day!

While these are very good and valid criticisms, there is one question no one is asking: What the BLEEP does this have to do with getting people to buy tickets on your airline?

Air New Zealand claimed it ended the campaign because it had been “overwhelmed” by the number of entries. Right. You’re stopping it because it’s successful. Right. I hope they fly better than they lie.

Via Adfreak

Google learns how to say alligator tears in Chinese

Google has “threatened” to pull out of China because – SURPRISE – the government was using Goog to get info on dissidents.

NAHHH? Really? Next you’ll tell me that Mark McGwire was using steroids.

Google … said that the company had discovered massive cyber attacks against itself and numerous other foreign companies that it said emanated from China. It prompted quick response from human rights advocates, who praised Google’s statement, and from U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who said Google’s allegations "raise very serious concerns and questions." "We look to the Chinese government for an explanation," Mrs. Clinton said on a visit to Hawaii. "The ability to operate with confidence in cyberspace is critical in a modern society and economy."*

Apparently The Googsters draw some sort of distinction between oppression via hacking and oppression via cooperating with government censorship. (See Google continues to be on cutting edge of hypocrisy theory for more on this. “At this point, it would take a mashup of Wittgenstein, Quantum mechanics and LSD to make sense of Google’s various explanations for what it will and won’t censor and why.”)

Not only is Google threatening to take its business and go home but the company took the “too little, too late” step of ending censorship on its Chinese search site. Previously the company 404’d searches on topics like Taiwan or the Tiananmen Square massacre. Were I a more cynical person (it could happen) I’d find it mightily convenient that Google is threatening to leave a nation where it is running a very distant second. I’d also call this threat a great PR move that generated a lot of attention in China. Fortunately I am not that cynical. (Thankfully others are: see this brilliant analysis from TechCrunch “Does anyone really think Google would be doing this if it had top market share in the country?”)

*While La Clinton is a diplomat and has to say things like this raises “very serious concerns and questions,” it is difficult to see my government get so worked about this when it has remained silent on little things like state-sponsored murder and torture. What seems to be different this time is that money is involved.

See related links:

• Selling your soul doesn’t always pay: Google losing China market share

• Raw Feed: Yahoo Apologizes to U.S. For Betraying China

• Headline of the Day: How Google Can Take the High Road on Privacy

• China Censorship: Google and Other Scoundrels

Most colorful pol in US ready to run again for office!

God bless you, Buddy Cianci.

Cianci –– former mayor of Providence, RI, current radio talk show host, and convicted felon – says he may get back into politics. Cianci says he may run against either Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-Carpet Bagger) or current Mayor David N. Cicilline (the only gay Jewish Italian mayor IN THE WORLD!).

Buddy is an astute observer of politics and he notes there is a strong anti-incumbent feeling out there. This feeling is running even higher in the Bay State which has something like a 13% unemployment rate. (Top that Michigan!) To outsiders it would seem that even that wouldn’t be enough for Cianci to get elected. They would be wrong.

Outsiders get all hung up on the fact that Buddy left office in disgrace not once but twice.

• In 1984 he resigned the mayoralty after pleading no-contest to charges of kidnapping and assaulting Raymond DeLeo with a fireplace log, an ashtray and a lighted cigarette. Cianci believed DeLeo, a long-time friend, was having an affair with the mayor’s estranged wife. This assault was witnessed by Cianci’s police chauffeur, his divorce lawyer, the Providence director of public works and a former state attorney general. But that’s ancient history.
• In 2002, during his seventh term as mayor, he was convicted for running a criminal enterprise out of City Hall and served a 4.5 year sentence. In some states that could present a problem, but not in Little Rhody where getting busted is practically a rite of passage for most pols. (For even more entertaining details click here for my article on RI, politics and corruption.)

Outsiders get it wrong because if you haven’t lived in RI you have no idea how weird it is. It is Fellini meets Terry Gilliam only weirder.

If Buddy runs do not bet against him. He has lost only one election that I can think of. His pasta sauce, The Mayor’s Own Marinara, is still sold throughout the state (and if you want some amusement google “Rhode Island gift baskets” and look at the contents).He remains popular with the electorate because he probably knows all of them. As Providence Journal columnist Bob Kerr told me, “I always remember there’s the friend of mine who’s a Cambodian guy – he came here, survived the killing fields. Did the classic American struggle, went to school and went to college, became a school counselor and then he got his master’s degree. On a hot summer afternoon in South Providence in this guy’s backyard, they were celebrating his master’s degree with some Cambodian food and a few friends and up comes the limo and out gets Buddy with a proclamation. … And that’s him, he’s always doing stuff like that.” During his times in office it was widely believed that Buddy would attend the opening of a door.

Sadly Kennedy’s seat is probably safe. Buddy would be bored out of his mind in Congress and he knows it. But if he runs for mayor his only opposition will be the good government types who are ethically right and about as interesting as a damp sponge.

Also in Buddy’s favor is the “he can’t be any worse than what we already have” factor. If I still lived in RI, I’d vote for him in a heartbeat – he may not always provide bread but he excels at circus.