Wednesday, August 23, 2006

File Under: Commercials Cause Crime

Seems a bunch of wet-pantied whiners have their knickers all in a knot over some of the ads being run on WBCN during their coverage of Patriots' football games.

Gun commercials played on a popular Boston radio station during Patriots game broadcasts have anti-crime and -violence crusaders up in arms.


How dare they exercise their right to enter a legal contract with a privately owned company to advertise a legal product to law-abiding consumers of said product? Where do they think they are? The United States of America?

Springfield-based gun maker Smith & Wesson is running radio ads during Patriots games on WBCN-FM (104.1) again this season, said gun company spokesman Paul Pluff.

The 30-second spot is set to music and ends with the message, "“Visit Smith-Wesson.com to learn more about handgun safety and to find a dealer near you."”


Oh, no! Handgun safety! EEEEK!

"It'’s great they'’re promoting gun safety. It's a little odd to me that they're trying to sell guns during a football game,"” said John Rosenthal, founder of the Massachusetts group Stop Handgun Violence.


Yeah, how fucking odd! A company choosing to advertise their product at a time and place when the ads will most likely be seen or heard by their target demographic.

Quite the oddity there, indeed!

What a dink.

"Football, beer and guns don't mix."


Not, in that order, perhaps. But, unless these ads are actively encouraging people to get drunk and shoot up a football stadium on gameday, do us all a favor and shut the fuck up.

And, is there some law, of which I am woefully unaware, that says only products relating directly to each other, and to the subject matter of the broadcast, shall be permitted?

How on earth do Dr. Phil, feminine hygiene products, and Huggies diapers "mix"?

Don't answer that.

The ad doesn'’t sit well with Dorchester mom Catherine Tyler, whose 21-year-old daughter was shot to death in 1985.


Would you be OK with these ads had your daughter been stabbed to death? Or run over by a drunk driver? Football game broadcasts are filled with beer and car advertisements. Not to mention, the parking lots next to the stadium filled with drunk tailgaters driving home after the game.

Perhaps we should ban all advertising for any product that could be used in a reckless or illegal manner to injure, maim, or kill. Take a Chia Pet, for example. You could do some serious damage with one of those suckers.

"I don't like it. It's still guns," said Tyler, who chairs the advisory board for Roxbury's Living After Murder program. "It's a bad idea. There's too many guns, too many shootings, too many murders."


I'm sorry for your loss, Catherine, but how would pulling a handful of radio ads have any impact, whatsoever, on the very real problem of "too many criminals" in Roxbury, Dorchester, and violence-plagued inner cities throughout the country.

Hint: It won't.

When has "Hide your head in the sand and cry" ever proven to be productive solution to anything?

Hint: It hasn't.