Which of the following posters has been banned from public advert spaces in Basel, and which is plastered all over the train station? Hint: the decision was made based on a recommendation by the Basel office of gender equality and integration.
The one with the burka is a political poster in favor of an initiative aiming at outlawing the construction of minarets in Switzerland. The other is more obvious, though what “chicks with guns” have to do with the Wild West remains a mystery to me. I’m glad they identified this Whopper as Western, because I would never have guessed – Lusty, perhaps, creating a more logical sequence with their Angry Whopper… Burger King speaks of a long-term emotionalization of their brand being the goal of this “new and unique” campaign: if so, couldn’t they have aimed higher than the parasympathetic nervous system and pavlovian response? Is the message “Our burgers alone don’t make people drool” really what they want to convey?
But back to the quiz: it was the left poster that got banned – for diffamation, racism, and discrimination.
If it were the U.S. there would have been no question, and such a poster might have earned the sponsor a lawsuit. But appealing to men’s lower instincts is a national sport. In Europe I wasn’t sure, you being a little more sensitive to the impact of foreign cultures.
Now they have the same advertisement with the burka and minarets replaced with CENSORED.
Probably a better advertisement for them than if they hadn’t been censored in the first place.
Okay, I give up and will finally take the bait. What is “diffamation”? I know better by now than to question your spelling or use of a word, but (1) do you mean “defamation,” and are merely going all French on us? or (2) have you invented an effective new word that means “discrimination against someone for no reason other than that he is different from you”?
Just because I usually spell correctly doesn’t mean I always do… it should have been “defamation,” but “Diffamierung” (German) and “diffamation” (French) along with my infrequent use of the word got the better of me. Visually, “defamation” still looks strange to me. (Not that it matters much or helps me in the way of an excuse, but the Italians say “diffamazione,” the Portuguese “difamação,” and the Spaniards “difamación.” From that perspective, I’m not going “all French,” but merely “all continental European.”)
So which poster would have earned a lawsuit? The burka?
The party behind the burka poster has a history of dodgy posters that get reported in the press because they’re inflammatory, and through that get much more exposure than through buying the ad space alone. It’s too bad the media go along.
The burka one, absolutely. If there were lawsuits for every billboard with UNcovered women here, we’d need more lawyers than we have, and that’s saying a lot.
From the AP in today’s paper:
“Swiss voters overwhelmingly approved a constitutional ban on minarets on Sunday, barring construction of the iconic mosque towers.”
“The initiative was approved 57.5 to 42.5 percent.”
Very interesting.
Even more interesting: I can’t decide whether to be thrilled or really upset….
Well, that turned out to be an easier decision than I thought. Now that I’ve read how much Switzerland is being vilified because of the vote, I have to come down on the side of the people. 🙂
I was quite surprised by the result and its clarity, as was the polling class and pretty much every elite worldwide. I wasn’t surprised by the reaction of the latter folks, although I had hoped that elected officials like the French foreign minister or the Swedish minister of justice would have a less snobby attitude toward a voting population.
At the same time that polls in Germany showed that Germans would have likely voted yes as well, Swiss joined hands in Facebook groups expressing feelings of triumph or shame from the election result. One man built a minaret on an office building out of protest, someone called for a Muslim party, a Swiss representative was interviewed on Al-Jazeera, some folks are looking into an initiative to make tolerance law (and eliminate the Minaret Initiative in the process) and others into their chances of successfully overturning an election result at the Strasbourg court.
I still think the initiative misses the point. It was billed as a first strike against a Muslim parallel society with Sharia law, but I don’t know how not having a certain architectural feature will keep those interested in enforcing religious law from doing so. It’s like telling Tiger Woods to use condoms – preventing one perceived problem while neglecting weightier core matters.