Thread: Moosehead pulls ad that offends women

http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/n ... 99&k=89006

Moosehead pulls ad that offends women


CP


Thursday, February 16, 2006


After complaints from a feminist group and incensed customers, New Brunswick's Moosehead Breweries has pulled an ad that implied women should speak no more than 50 words a day.

The ad, which appeared in The Onion, a U.S.-based satirical magazine, read: "The average woman speaks 10,000 words in a day. Roughly 9,950 too many."

"It's offensive," said Rosella Melanson, executive director of the New Brunswick Advisory Council on the Status of Women. "It's saying women should not be listened to."

The brewery, based in Saint John, N.B., has pledged to introduce a policy to avoid publishing similar ads in the future.

Melanson said she heard about the ad after Ms. Magazine featured it last fall in its No Comment section, which deals with items considered insulting or degrading to women.

Ms. Magazine, which describes itself as the "media expert on issues relating to ... women's rights," later published an apology from the company.

"Moosehead Breweries will not tolerate this type of sexism and tasteless work again," Joel Levesque, the company's vice-president of public affairs, wrote in a letter to a woman from New York who complained about the ad.

"I have been told that the creative team in question now fully understands what they did and that their lame attempt at humour was not amusing."

Levesque said the ad appeared only once last March in The Onion's Minneapolis, Minn., edition, where the company was conducting some test marketing. It was pulled as soon as a handful of consumers complained.

"It's not something we're particularly proud of," Levesque said. "The bottom line is we don't condone sexism - intended or not."

Moosehead apologized to offended customers in writing and the ad agencies involved were told the ad crossed the line.

Any ads that might be considered "a bit edgy" must now be approved by Saint John executives, Levesque said.

Radical feminists need to get a life! There are more important issues to deal with than being offended over a little advertisement. For example, if feminists truly cared about women, they would actively be involved in immigration enforcement and deporting illegal aliens. Many of the men who come from third world countries (I can name Mexico and Arab countries as two) have a very low disregard for women, plus commit a large number of crimes, some against women/girls, such as rape and child prostitution.

What started out as a good movement to earn women the right to vote (I think it was during the early part of the last century but I'm not up on history) and later to try to promote equal pay for equal work, has turned ridiculous with gender wars that have caused a great deal of harm to individuals and society.

Here's an article written by one of my favorite authors who I found by accident. He doesn't mince words on his view of modern day feminists. If you think it might cause offense in the forums, please delete it.

http://www.fredoneverything.net/COL1.shtml

FRED Columns
Fred Reed

Feminist Tarantulas

A Rural Male Reflects On Feminist Incivility, While Calculating Windage

Maybe I'm just a country boy at heart, and lack sophistication, and don't see things the way I should. But when I watch one of those radical-feminist women heave onto a podium, like the forehaunches of an under-nourished giraffe but with more hair on her lip, and start hollering and carrying on about what slugs and bandits men are, I start thinking of the curative powers of a shotgun full of rock salt.

I recommend a 12-gauge duck gun.

It's the incivility of these feminist people that gets to me. Most of them seem to have the manners of a guard dog , but without the utility. (I know, I know, I'm going to get angry letters. From guard dogs.) For pure bile, you can't beat a radical feminist. The average specimen can turn out bad temper for hours on end, like lumber from a sawmill, and any of it sounds like all the rest. The following, which gives the flavor, is from Andrea Dworkin, who I gather is a sort of museum-piece siege howitzer for feminism.

It's pretty much how they all talk. Listen:

"Men use the night to erase us...The annihilation of a woman's personality, individuality, will, character, is prerequisite to male sexuality, and so the night is the sacred time of male sexual celebration, because it is dark and in the dark it is easier not to see: not to see who she is. Male sexuality, drunk on its intrinsic contempt for all life, but especially for women's lives, can run wild, hunt down random victims, use the dark for cover, find in the dark solace, sanctuary, cover."

I do?

How does a man respond to such a broadside? The prose could use some lubrication, of course, and maybe a new set of plug wires, but I'm talking about the content. My first impulse is to reassure the poor woman: "There, there, Andrea, you're safe, nights just don't get dark enough." My second impulse is to wonder just how much radical feminists know about male sexuality, and what book they read it in.

I like to picture myself on a Saturday-night date in high school, parking on a back road.

My date: "You're driving kind of funny. I reckon it was the beer."

Me: "Why, no, Sally. I'm drunk on my intrinsic contempt for all life."

Sally: "You're so silly. Come here."

Me: "Soon...soon. Do you mind staying here by yourself for a bit?"

Sally: "Huh?"

Me: "I need to, uh, you know, run wild for a few minutes. Hunt down a few random victims. Use the dark for cover. Guy stuff."

Sally: "You nuts or something?"

Me: "It's...night, Sally...the sacred time of male sexual celebration."

Sally: "You're gonna do it out there?"

OK, I understand that the radical feminist ladies are a few french fries short of a Happy Meal. They can't help themselves. What I can't figure is why more-or-less grown-up editors publish all this clucking and scratching as if it made sense. And I also don't understand how the rules got fixed so that a Dworkin can say anything at all about men and get away with it--but men can't say anything back.

Any loon feminist can accuse men of being rapists, killers, sadists, and Marines. These are pretty serious charges. A fellow could take exception to them. But if I say something comparatively innocuous in return, such as that I weary of being harried by a rat-pack of diesel-fired tarantulas who mostly look like Rin Tin Tin's littermates--why, they get mad. (Yes, I know, that was a three-animal zoological-automotive metaphor. Patent applied for.)

I figure if radical-feminist ladies can talk ugly about us, then we can talk ugly about them. And we're probably better at it, which they might bear in mind.

What I say is, if you have pool-hall manners, you ought to expect to play by pool-hall rules. Any guy who doesn't work for the Washington Post knows this. Go into the wrong bar, and somebody will likely hit you over the head with a pool cue. Nothing wrong with that. But the assailant will grant you the right, while questioning your ability, to smack him on the head with your cue. Symmetry. Reciprocity. Conservation of parity.

Not those feminist people. They want to swing cues. They don't want to get swung at. I say let's treat'em equal.

It'll happen. Some day before long I'll be talking about something sensible, like a '57 Chevy with Carter AFBs and a three-quarter Isky and 17 coats of hand-rubbed Orchard Mist lacquer that looks like Chinese emerald carving if they'd done it right. Sure enough, some dog-biscuit feminist is going to sniff, "Ah, yes, boys and their toys. Boys will be boys. Intrinsic contempt for...."

And I'm going to say, "Mercy, lady, mercy. Yes, we males are a sorry lot, sinners all, and neck deep in iniquity. The shame of it bores into my soul. Now you go stand in the middle of Dupont Circle at high noon, with a pair of seven-by-fifty binoculars, and look real carefully all around, and point to one thing, with a moving part, that was invented by a radical feminist."

Then I'll go for my duck gun.

Hey that looked like more than 50 words noillegalimmigrationannie!
Okay I'll let slide this time. Good follow up article no need to delete it. I agree a lot of people take some of the trivial stuff way too seriously and need to get a life.

I went to Fred's site and started reading. I began to get the urge to read all night so I ran back here as fast as I could. A person could get addicted to that

Originally Posted by Brian503a

Hey that looked like more than 50 words noillegalimmigrationannie!
Okay I'll let slide this time. Good follow up article no need to delete it. I agree a lot of people take some of the trivial stuff way too seriously and need to get a life.

Yep! I went over the 50 words limit per day!

Originally Posted by PinestrawGuys

I went to Fred's site and started reading. I began to get the urge to read all night so I ran back here as fast as I could. A person could get addicted to that

I've had the same problems with this link, wanting to read and not wanting to stop. I don't always agree with everything Fred Reed writes, but he is VERY VERY FUNNY, very politically incorrect and writes on a number of topics.

Here's another perspective rant from Fred Reed. This is the article that made me aware of his existence and on a divorce website.

http://www.fredoneverything.net/Divorce.shtml

Universal Divorce

A Male's Perspective On A Bad Idea

If you were to believe those brawny viragos at NOW, you might think that universal divorce was a force for liberation of women, and just a splendid thing for kids. You know the line: marriage is the vilest form of chattel slavery, men molest their kids when they're not beating them like drums, and such like. (Actually, I can't think of a better authority on children than 12,000 squalling lesbians who don't have any. Can you?)

Well, let me offer a revisionist view of divorce, from a male point of view:

After a few years under one roof, Willy Bill and Cupcake no longer get along well. Part of it is Willy Bill's fault, and he knows it. Part of it is Cupcake's fault, but she doesn't know it. She expected marriage to fulfill her fantasies and make her happy. It didn't, because married people are just married people, and life ain't all ham hocks and home fries. This too is Willy Bill's fault. Life, that is.

Since Cupcake wasn't happy being single, and wasn't happy being married, she now figures she'll be happy divorced. She's going to have a dynamite social life, not like living with what's-his-name. She'll have a fascinating job and a swell place. Joe Perfect will appear on a white horse and life will be roses again. She forgets that it never was, and anyway there just isn't that much Prozac. The divorce occurs.

Which devastates the kids. She says it's better for them to have one parent than to have parents who don't get along. This is the Enabling Fantasy of divorce. Ten years later the kids will still be trying to get mommy and daddy back together.

Next, Cupcake learns that the business world is not importunate in its desire for women of thirty-six with no resume. Day care is expensive. As kids get older, their toys cost more. What's-his-name may have been inadequate as a fantasy mechanic, but he did have a sizable paycheck.

Joe Perfect doesn't show up, which is hardly surprising. Cupcake isn't Suzy Prom Queen any longer. Most guys shy away from women who always have kids in tow. They have either had kids, and don't want more, or else never wanted them in the first place. As men get older, marriage becomes less important to them.

Cupcake finds that the men she might date, typically two to eight years older than she is, are a sorry lot. The good ones have been taken. The leftovers are either gay, or confirmed bachelors, or three-time losers looking for their fourth divorce, or such awful dweebs that nobody wanted them in the first place. Or they've been burned in one marriage and aren't about to make that mistake again.

In the divorce, either she got the friends or she didn't. When a couple split, the friends seem to think they can continue to be friends with only one of the former couple. If he got them, she's horribly lonely. If he didn't, she finds that married couples, which most of them were, don't want single people around. Four's company; three's a triangle. If she's attractive, it's worse.

Then come the long empty weekends when nobody calls. Depression arrives. She has a hard time growing a new social life because the kids are always there. Depression is two to four times more common in women than men, depending on whose figures you like, and she's got reasons to be depressed. No retirement, for example. She gets a prescription for lithium. Try finding a single woman past forty who isn't on Prozac, lithium, Depacote, Zoloft, or Welbutrin, all the M&Ms of the irremediably unhappy.

You can't divorce a car payment. Cupcake finds that she has to have a full-time job, and maybe some part-time jobs too. Days only have twenty-four hours. She doesn't have time to be a full-time mother and have an adult's social life. Often motherhood draws the short straw. She starts leaving young kids alone for long periods while she goes out. By no means all divorced mothers do this, but more do than the newspapers tell you. Latch-keyism becomes inevitable. The kids, unsupervised, feeling neglected, angry because Daddy left, begin to get into trouble.

Not infrequently mommy comes to resent her offspring. They're always there, always whining and fighting and wanting this and that. They make her life miserable, which doesn't happen with two parents, and there's no respite in sight. At best she becomes irritable and seems cold. At worst she slaps the hell out of them.

Then, dear God, puberty hits. Other things being equal, women are better parents than men for small children. A man would go crazy. For older kids, no. At adolescence they begin asserting themselves and testing Cupcake. A fifteen-year-old girl makes Attila the Hun look like a milk-fed pansy in lace shorts. With mammals like that, Cupcake will soon reflect, no wonder the dinosaurs died out. The kids walk over her, becoming contemptuous. She comes close to hating them for it.

A man would say, "No. You aren't going to run away with a feeble-minded dope-dealer who plays bass guitar. Because I say so. We've finished talking about it." It would stick. Women don't do this as well.

Relations with the ex run from none to good. Like as not, she hates him because the divorce didn't make her happy. Frequently she gets back at him through the kids. An angry man smacks someone. A woman's aggression is passive: She withholds sex or, after the divorce, the kids, while earnestly pretending she's doing something else. He gets no influence in raising the tads, doesn't get the report cards or school pictures, isn't consulted.

At best, he gets called only when the kids get into trouble and she can't handle it. Daddy becomes The Heavy. Five years later when they figure it out, they will be grateful. But that's five years off.

And there's nothing he can do about it: "joint custody" or not, if she doesn't comply, his choice is to put up with it, or sue mommy, which is not the high road to a kid's heart. He puts up with it.

Don't you love it? I mean, what a deal. The kids hate the divorce like poison, Willy Bill misses his kids horribly, and Cupcake gets to grow old by herself in a bleak apartment with a cat named Fluffy.

If that's not social advance, I don't know what is.

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/30342

i have been a fan of the Onion for years and So i understand they have no sacred cows. they once made fun of martin luther king and his famous speech
it was like this"

" i had a dream only it was really wierd and all grey .. and there were these ...

radical feminists dont exist - maybe they did for a few years but then life and time and the impossibilty of practising ideals became apparent-

The sample letter below is also available in Espanol through the NOW website. Go figure!

I visited the www.now.org website and even though they claim to represent women, I could not find anywhere on their website where they are fighting to deport illegal aliens and enforce the USA immigration laws even though this would be an enormous benefit to not only women, but children and men as well. If someone else can find that NOW is supporting these efforts, please educate me.

Who are these people who are killing the Women of San Juarez? I will bet the majority or perhaps all are not American citizens nor American citizen men.

Even though radical feminism may not be as big an issue in the media as it was in the 60's and 70's their agendas still continue to influence American society in some negative ways and harm individuals, including women they claim to protect. They have lost the respect of many and deserve that loss. I could go on and on and on and may do so some time soon.

On a personal level, I can think of one major area of my life where the feminist agenda has directly harmed yours truly.

http://www.now.org/issues/global/juarez/letter.html

Stop the Killing of the Women of San Juarez

Sample Letter to Congress

Dear Representative/Senator.

I am writing to urge you to become a cosponsor of the (House Concurrent Resolution 90/Senate Concurrent Resolution 16) addressing the murders of hundreds of young women in Ciudad Juarez and Chihuahua, Mexico that have occurred since 1993. Representative Hilda Solis and Senator Jeff Bingaman introduced the resolution concurrently in the House and Senate. Both resolutions were introduced with strong bipartisan support.

Amnesty International reports that nearly 400 young women have been murdered in Ciudad Juarez and Chihuahua since 1993. Of these, 137 experienced some form of sexual violence before being killed. In nearly all of these cases investigations were either mishandled or not carried out. A Mexican Federal Special Prosecutor has reviewed almost half of these cases, and she has found negligence or incompetence by state authorities in more than 150 cases. So far, no state authority has been held accountable for their negligence and lack of due diligence, although an arrest warrant has been issued for the former Chihuahua State Attorney General.

Compounding the tragedy is the fact that several persons detained and accused of the murders have claimed they were tortured and/or forced to confess. In one such case a woman from Minnesota and her Mexican husband were detained and allegedly tortured into confessing to the murder of a young woman in Chihuahua city. After extensive reviews of the case a judge decided to release the couple for lack of credible evidence. Unfortunately, the State Attorney General of Chihuahua continues to appeal this decision and has not dropped the charges against them.

The murder of young women in Juarez and Chihuahua are important to the people of the United States because violence against women is unacceptable anywhere. These cases often have a direct impact in the U.S. because extended families reside on both sides of the border. Violence can affect U.S. tourists and business travelers visiting Juarez and Chihuahua.

I urge you to contact Rep. Solis's (or Sen. Bingaman's) office to co-sponsor this important resolution. Ongoing international attention to this tragedy will assist in the struggle for justice led by the victim's families, and will send a strong message that violence against women is unacceptable, wherever it occurs.

Sincerely,

Note: Text of letter provided by Amnesty International

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