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Controversial Cell Phone Ad Pokes Fun at Holocaust
City News Toronto ^ | 14 September 2007 | City News Staff (Toronto)

Posted on 09/14/2007 4:32:54 AM PDT by timsbella

It was supposed to be a harmless advertisement for a telecommunications company, but all it ended up demonstrating was an advertiser's negligence and extremely poor taste.

The Solo Mobile ad, which Thursday hung high above the crowds inside Downsview Station, depicts a tearful woman wearing a series of buttons, one of which reads "Belsen was a gas," a reference to Bergen-Belsen, a Nazi concentration camp used during the Second World War.

CityNews was notified of the offensive ad by an angry viewer, who like many we spoke to, had little to say in favour of the tasteless display.

"I was pretty stunned when I saw it," said Jonathan Warren. "I thought, 'Whose oversight was this?'"

It's an oversight that was easy enough to make for the thousands of commuters who passed under the massive poster, but for Bell Mobility, which owns Solo Mobile, it was an unacceptable error in judgment and one their executives were quick to respond to by issuing the following statement:

"We are in the process of removing all of these particular Solo Mobile ads... running these ads was an error on our part and one we certainly regret. You won't see them again of course."

As for Warren, he says Bell's course of action is the only one possible, though it doesn't change his view of the company.

"I would hesitate to say that it's sending an anti-Semitic message," Warren continued. "What it's sending is that the corporations that have put that out there are pretty unobservant."

As of Thursday there were 51 of the ads around Toronto and Vancouver, all of which Bell promised would be removed by the day's end.

(Excerpt) Read more at citynews.ca ...


TOPICS: Canada; Israel; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: antisemitism; holocaust; punkrock; sexpistols
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This is Toronto. This is right at the High Holidays. It's unbelievable.
1 posted on 09/14/2007 4:32:56 AM PDT by timsbella
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To: Alouette; SJackson; GMMAC; fanfan

Oh Canada, a tear for thee.

Ping!


2 posted on 09/14/2007 4:34:43 AM PDT by timsbella (Mark Steyn for Prime Minister of Canada! (Steve's won my vote in the meantime))
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To: timsbella

Kind of sick, don’t ya think?


3 posted on 09/14/2007 4:37:35 AM PDT by freekitty (May the eagles long fly over our beautiful and free American sky.)
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To: freekitty

Sick doesn’t begin to cover it. Worse still, if you watch the video the ad in advance of the clip is for...Bell. The station is promoting the very company it’s chiding for “poor taste”.


4 posted on 09/14/2007 4:40:14 AM PDT by timsbella (Mark Steyn for Prime Minister of Canada! (Steve's won my vote in the meantime))
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To: timsbella
The "Belsen Was A Gas" reference is to a tasteless song by the punk group The Sex Pistols.

In the late '70s and early '80s it was a relatively common button for punks to wear alongside 100 other buttons and safety pins and studs on their paint-streaked MC jackets.

This was most likely a model wearing vintage punk clothes. I doubt that this was deliberate malice, but the laziness of a modeling company not really looking at their props.

Regardless, it wasn't funny then and it isn't funny now.

5 posted on 09/14/2007 4:41:35 AM PDT by wideawake (Why is it that so many self-proclaimed "Constitutionalists" know so little about the Constitution?)
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To: wideawake

Interesting. I was definitely too young and not exposed to their “art” to understand the reference. It’s still shocking in an age of PC and “tolerance” that engulfs Canuckistan.


6 posted on 09/14/2007 4:46:39 AM PDT by timsbella (Mark Steyn for Prime Minister of Canada! (Steve's won my vote in the meantime))
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To: timsbella
So let me get this straight, a few million Islamonazis spew their anti-Semitic and anti-Christian invectives every day for the past thirty years, they strapped bombs onto their children and send them into public markets to detonate.

The Germans and the French and American liberals blame this on Israel and the Jews and then condemn America’s action to put an end to a new holocaust that the Islamonazis keep promising and trying to deliver.

But it’s one stupid, tasteless button on an ad thought up by an idiot but put out by a big corporation that finally raises everyone’s ire?

Once again, it’s not what is being said, but who says it. Leftism in action.

If the button had said, “Gas Bush” everyone up there would be talking about what a bold statement it was, that it’s controversy proved it was an important point and that we need dialog.

Warren knows now how patriotic Americans feel when we hear scumbags like Schumer on the house floor telling the world that American troops are so incompetent that it took the warlords coming together to bring peace in Anbar, that our troops did not bring the peace but made the quest for peace more difficult.

7 posted on 09/14/2007 4:50:11 AM PDT by Ghost of Philip Marlowe (Liberals are blind. They are the dupes of Leftists who know exactly what they're doing.)
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To: timsbella; GMMAC; Clive; exg; kanawa; conniew; backhoe; -YYZ-; Former Proud Canadian; ...

8 posted on 09/14/2007 4:52:59 AM PDT by fanfan ("We don't start fights my friends, but we finish them, and never leave until our work is done."PMSH)
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To: timsbella

Happy New Year, BTW.

:-)


9 posted on 09/14/2007 4:53:33 AM PDT by fanfan ("We don't start fights my friends, but we finish them, and never leave until our work is done."PMSH)
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To: timsbella
Interesting. I was definitely too young and not exposed to their “art” to understand the reference.

Basically the punks did anything that would upset their elders who, at that point, were WWII veterans in their 50s and 60s.

Making light of the events of the Great War was a way of mocking and belittling the UK establishment.

I doubt many of them realized exactly how vile they were being.

10 posted on 09/14/2007 5:17:30 AM PDT by wideawake (Why is it that so many self-proclaimed "Constitutionalists" know so little about the Constitution?)
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To: wideawake

what was the original punk reference? was it also to the holocaust?


11 posted on 09/14/2007 5:26:06 AM PDT by beebuster2000 (choice is not not peace or war, but small war now, or big war later masquerading as peace now.)
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To: timsbella

Ain’t it the truth!


12 posted on 09/14/2007 5:34:24 AM PDT by Convert from ECUSA (Hunter and Tancredo in '08! La Raza - the PLO of the Western Hemisphere)
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To: beebuster2000
what was the original punk reference? was it also to the holocaust?

Absolutely. It was a song about the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp apparently written from the viewpoint of an SS guard who was happy to be assigned there because it was a plum assignment safe behind enemy lines and a guard could steal as much loot as he could carry from the victims.

The British were very proud of their role in liberating the death camp, and a punk singer singing from the viewpoint of one of England's most despised enemies was designed to shock and offend the proper English establishment that the punks hated.

Basically it paints a tableaux of a fat, greedy Nazi REMF killing Jews for fun and profit.

I believe that the original Sex Pistols vocalist Johnny Rotten admits the song was indefensible.

13 posted on 09/14/2007 5:45:34 AM PDT by wideawake (Why is it that so many self-proclaimed "Constitutionalists" know so little about the Constitution?)
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To: wideawake

I wonder if Bell Canada is now offering it as a ring tune. /sarc


14 posted on 09/14/2007 5:49:21 AM PDT by timsbella (Mark Steyn for Prime Minister of Canada! (Steve's won my vote in the meantime))
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To: beebuster2000
There was also a punk group from Los Angeles called The Vandals who wrote a song called "Dachau Cabana" to the tune of Barry Manilow's Copacabana, in which Manilow's protagonists of Lola and Rico are replaced by Anne Frank and an SS camp guard.

Making fun of the Holocaust was very hip in the punk scene in the early years.

Of course, now that The Vandals have launched profitable reunion tours they have distanced themselves from that side of their legacy and refuse to perform the song or acknowledge its existence.

15 posted on 09/14/2007 5:51:36 AM PDT by wideawake (Why is it that so many self-proclaimed "Constitutionalists" know so little about the Constitution?)
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To: timsbella
LOL!

Shanah Tovah.

16 posted on 09/14/2007 5:52:25 AM PDT by wideawake (Why is it that so many self-proclaimed "Constitutionalists" know so little about the Constitution?)
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To: Ghost of Philip Marlowe
Once again, it’s not what is being said, but who says it. Leftism in action.

Exactly right. Imagine if a conservative walked around wearing a button that said: "Hiroshima was a Blast!" It would not be interpreted merely as bad taste but as evidence of evil.

17 posted on 09/14/2007 5:56:01 AM PDT by andy58-in-nh (Kill the terrorists, secure the borders, and give me back my freedoms.)
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To: wideawake; fanfan

Despite my blood being set to “boil” at the moment, it sure is good to have FRiends.


18 posted on 09/14/2007 5:59:53 AM PDT by timsbella (Mark Steyn for Prime Minister of Canada! (Steve's won my vote in the meantime))
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To: timsbella

While I laughed..........it wouldn’t surprise me in the least.


19 posted on 09/14/2007 6:06:02 AM PDT by tioga
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To: andy58-in-nh
But the thing is, Hiroshima WAS a blast, so that statement would be factually true.

And in poor taste.

But the bombing saved the lives of countless Americans, so I can't get worked up about it. Until I've had my coffee, anyway.

20 posted on 09/14/2007 6:41:29 AM PDT by -=SoylentSquirrel=- (Coffee: My lower digestive system will not toil without it..)
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