PC-Chairman Kills Effective Ad

Tuesday, August 08, 2006

The political correctness police are at it again:

PHILADELPHIA - Health officials yanked public service advertisements urging HIV testing after a gay advocacy group expressed concerns about images depicting young black men in a gun's cross hairs.

"Putting the face of a black man in the cross hairs of a gun paints a damaging message about violence and black men," Lee Carson, chairman of the Black Gay Men's Leadership Council, wrote in a letter to the city's interim health commissioner last month.

The $236,000 campaign, which ended abruptly Monday, was geared at gay and bisexual men and featured the tagline, "Have YOU been hit?"

It's an analogy, and an effective one. No one is talking about blacks and violence. If we're going to discuss the dangers of HIV, let's be honest add talk about the group most at risk: gay men - black or not.

So here we had an abrasive ad campaign that might have gotten attention but because some might find it "offensive" it has been pulled indefinitely. Maybe Lee Carson needs to re-examine the purpose of his job.