But first, a news brief:

Longtime COOL’EH contributor David Schoetz dropped a nice piece about Manny Ramirez’s eBay grill auction today on ABCNews.com.

I finally sat down and watched the material on Nike’s Air Force One website. Shit is some powerful propaganda if I’ve ever seen it. Which I don’t say in a derogatory way necessarily. The first segment of the documentary has a great story about how Ones outlived their first release thanks to three Baltimore sneaker shops, and the video of the Italian shoemaker putting together the “perfect” AF1 is interesting also. I wonder when they’re going to post the documentary about the Chinese manufacturing plants that make the other bazillion shoes. Seriously. If that isn’t part of the history, this whole thing will be a total whitewash. Now if you’ll excuse me I have to go buy some Nikes.

After a brief period of relative stability, Mogadishu appears to be headed back toward it’s chaotic equilibrium. Yet another example of the calming had of the CIA.

Democracy Now aired the second part of their interview with Jeremy Scahill, whose work documenting the rise of Blackwater, the private, 20,000-strong “Praetorian army” headed by a conservative Christian and major Bush campaign donor, is eye-opening to say the least.

Ron Redmond of the United Nations Refugee Agency reported yesterday that “the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) estimated that more than 15 million Iraqis were now considered extremely vulnerable. An estimated 4 million Iraqis were dependent on food assistance. The chronic child malnutrition rate was at 23 percent. Some 70 percent of the Iraqi population lacked access to adequate water supplies, while 80 percent lacked effective sanitation. The unemployment rate was over 50 percent. About a third of UNHCR’s $60 million appeal for the region – more than half of which had so far been raised – was aimed at providing help to tens of thousands of the most vulnerable IDPs inside Iraq. Compared to the overall needs, it was a drop in the ocean. With displacement continuing at an estimated rate of up to 50,000 a month, the humanitarian needs were growing by the day.”

Elsewhere, Jamie Stern-Weiner (really his name), an accomplished political blogger, dropped a great piece yesterday in celebration of the fourth anniversary of the start of the war. If I link a porn video will you keep reading?

AOL ACCIDENTALLY EQUATES ONLINE VIDEOS TO UNDERPRIVILEGED CHILDREN

Toward the end of last year AOL ran an ad during the NFL playoffs that featured Ed O’Neill of “Married With Children” fame. I was never a big fan of his show, and my suspicion of its popularity is probably subconsciously linked to my distaste for the Jerry Springer phenomenon and NASCAR racing culture. Maybe my memory of O’Neil’s rise to fame as a white-trash everyman colored my perception of the AOL ad, but I thought it was in poor taste and was surprised to see such a big company putting something out that could so easily offend were people to take some time to think about it. Luckily for them, no one really has. Maybe I’m being overly critical, but I’ll let you be the judge.

The spot, which according to AdWeek was meant to “position the online service beyond its dial-up heritage,” was conceived by ad agency Hill, Holiday as a “category builder,” according to Lauren Herman, an associate creative director who with her partner created the ad concept. “It really is a public service announcement,” she told me, “we want people to watch videos online.” The spot originally ran in December of last year, but recently it’s been popping up again.

The ad shows O’Neill walking across the keyboard of a giant laptop. “Sadly, many deserving online videos go unwatched everyday,” he begins, while several video images play in the background. O’Neill tells viewers that many online videos will “never reach their full potential,” while sad-sounding piano music furthers the mock-serious tone. “Fortunately there’s a solution,” says O’Neill, “for just zero cents a day you can bring a quality online video into your life whenever you want.” Ironically, as he says this, videos of Paris Hilton, Nicolas Cage, and Joan and Melissa Rivers flash in the background, and text that reads “millions of online videos are standing by” appears on the screen. “Make a difference,” he adds in closing, “just click play.” At the end a voiceover comes in to let viewers know that “this message was brought to you by video.aol.com.”

When I first saw the ad I couldn’t believe someone would actually spoof children’s aid organizations in an effort to sell their online video platform. The language used in the ad—“never reach their full potential:” “just zero cents a day”—is recognizable to anyone who’s ever stayed up to watch late-night television and seen the calls for sponsorship or donations done by organizations like the Christian Children’s Fund or the World Food Program.

Naturally I got in touch with AOL’s VP of communications, Ruth Safarty, to see what the deal was. Did AOL really knowingly mock PSAs that aim to feed destitute children? When questioned about the ad, Safarty would say only this, which she sent in an email: “The tongue-in-cheek public service announcement approach was intended to capture the attention of viewers, and educate those who may not be familiar with online video. As I mentioned, the ad was only on the air for one month (December, 2006) and it is no longer running. There are no plans to bring it back at this time.” I’m not sure what television ad isn’t created to capture the attention of viewers, and her reminder to me that the ad wasn’t going to run again seemed a tacit acknowledgement that the ad could be negatively construed.

Safarty wasn’t doing much talking, so I got in touch with Hill, Holliday and they agreed to let me talk to Lauren Herman, although I don’t believe I admitted I was going to try and find out if people and the agency were sitting around laughing at malnourished children.

“We knew that a PSA would probably be a good approach,” Herman told me, “barring the likelihood that it might be interpreted in an ironic way, which was part of the intention certainly, but also wanting to speak—this is going to sound awkward—but to speak from the heart, you know, from the internet service providers and let them know, Hey, you can watch a video.” Fair enough. I asked if there was ever a discussion of the spot being construed as in poor taste and Hansen said “No, not to my knowledge,” and added that mocking humanitarian organizations was “certainly never our intention.” Again, fair enough.

But to some degree admitting that irony was part of the intention, indeed saying that Ed O’Neill was brought on “as someone who could pull off perhaps an ironic twist with a little bit of a smile,” is an acknowledgement that something somewhere was being laughed at. Perhaps not specifically malnourished children or the organizations whose PSAs seek to feed them, but certainly the idea of doing a mock-PSA for something as inconsequential as internet video was seen as a funny way to engage the public.

And maybe it is to some. But to me using language immediately identifiable with PSAs that seek to feed, clothe, educate and vaccinate some of the 11,000 children that die daily worldwide, no matter how “hackneyed” some people might consider these ads, is plainly tasteless.

It’s hard to say what it means that none of the people involved in creating, approving or airing the ad saw the project as potentially offensive. But maybe it’s an indication of just how thick the barriers are, how far down in our collective subconscious our ‘audience fatigue’ has forced our understanding of the world being left behind while populations in developed nations pursue a “better internet experience.”

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 21st, 2007 at 2:39 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.