PETA, the much-vilified animal-rights group, has launched its latest campaign — and like most of its recent efforts, it seeks to shock and awe people into paying attention.
As Adrants puts it:
Those radical exaggerators over at PETA are up to their old sensationalism again with the launch of Milk Gone Wild, a spoof on the Girls Gone Wild series which uses titillation and human udders to call attention to the apparent health hazards of drinking milk … PETA has, again, done what it does best; use sex and controversy to bring attention to its causes.
All true. PETA is radical. It does offend. In fact, what’s even more disturbing than the “Girls Gone Wild” parody is the actual glimpse into the life and death of dairy cows on the “Milk Gone Wild” site.
If you’ll indulge us for a moment, we just want to throw a little thought out there, for discussion purposes only — and then you can tell us how wrong we are.
Here’s the thought:
In the antebellum United States, most people — North and South — didn’t want to know about the messy details of slavery. Even plantation owners shielded themselves from it, leaving it to overseers to do the dirty work. People just wanted their cotton shirts and the other benefits of forced labor, and didn’t want to think about where it all came from. Abolitionists, as a result, were much-vilified.
Today, we want our gasoline, we want our perfume that’s been tested on animals, we want to have sex and abort the consequences, we want to eat meat but not see what happens in the slaughterhouse, and on and on.
We live in a world where if we don’t want to see all the unpleasant ingredients that go into the soup of our lives, we don’t have to. And we choose not to.
It’s a big cultural secret, the emperor’s new clothes. And the media, more often than not, is the royal tailor.
OK, so tell us we’re full of it. We can take it.
Technorati tags: PETA, Advertising, Public Relations, Marketing
"Who Do You Think Is Older?" — Media Edition
We all know that celebrity weeklies can be catty. But US Weekly actually made us cringe (just a little) with a feature in its January 30 issue called “Who Do You Think Is Older?”
In this latest example of US‘s much-copied, parlor-game brand of journalism, an intrepid staffer shows pics of various pairs of female celebrities to “100 people in NYC’s Rockefeller Center” and asks … well, you know.
And so we end up with side-by-side mugs of Felicity Huffman and Julianne Moore, with US reporting that 90 out of 100 people thought Felicity looked older than Julianne — even though she’s actually two years younger!
Um…everyone, including Felicity, knows this, don’t they? You’re just rubbing it in to be nasty, aren’t you, US Weekly?
But really, it’s kind of an interesting concept. So we decided to gather the photos of the editors of some popular magazines and pose the same question: “Who Do You Think Is Older?”
Here’s Match-up No. 1:
Martha Nelson, editor, People Group (People and Teen People).
Bonnie Fuller, editorial director, AMI (Star and Celebrity Living).
Do you have your answer?
Now, here’s Match-up No. 2:
Janice Min, editor in chief, US Weekly.
Atoosa Rubenstein, editor in chief, Seventeen.
OK, have you voted?
The actual ages of these editors are …
Match-up No. 1:
They’re both 52, we think; we didn’t have exact DOBs. We polled the Media Orchard household, including our Cavalier, and everyone thought Martha looked older.
Match-up No. 2:
Janice is 36 and Atoosa 33, more or less. We’re sure everyone got this one right.
See, the difference between Media Orchard and US Weekly is that we actually feel a little guilty right now.
(US Weekly pic from Amy’s Robot, which claims to have invented the “Who’s Older?” concept.)
Update: “Who Wore It Best?” — Baby Edition.
Technorati tags: Journalism, Celebrities, Publications, Marketing