February 03, 2005

BIAS DETECTED IN SUPER BOWL AD PROTEST

UNITED STATES
Catholic League

Bowing to pressure from SNAP (Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests), Catholic activists, lawyers, psychologists and feminists, the Ford Motor Company has withdrawn a Super Bowl ad for a new Lincoln truck, the Mark LT. The ad shows a clergyman (dressed to look like either a Catholic or an Episcopalian priest) who finds the keys to the truck in the collection plate; a little girl put them there as a prank. The happy cleric, who thinks the truck is his, is dismayed when the girl and her father show up to claim the keys. The ad ends by showing the cleric approaching a church marquee; he then puts the letters L and T on the opposite sides of the word US, thus spelling LUST.

Catholic League president William Donohue criticized the protesters today:

“When asked yesterday by the Chicago Tribune what I thought of the ad (it could be seen on the Internet), I had a one-word response—asinine. When asked what I had to say about the protesters, I said it was ‘absurd’ to charge that the ad ‘trivializes and exploits the sex scandal.’ Indeed, it is worse than absurd—it reveals a deep-seated bias against Catholic priests that is very disturbing.

Posted by kshaw at February 3, 2005 06:08 PM