Nice People Theatre sent out the following email today about the ad for the upcoming opening of the play "Love Jerry":
"Love Jerry" opens on Friday and is a truly stunning and remarkable thing to see.
We were very excited to take out an advertisement online at philly.com with a wonderful little video advertisement we dreamed up. We had negotiated the price and placement and everything was good to go until...
THEY SAW THE WORD 'PEDOPHILE'
That's right, folks. Philadelphia's major news outlet refused our advertising dollars because of the word pedophile and suggested we replace the word. But no other word was satisfactory to them - they censored our ad for fear that people would click on the play button to watch our ad and think that they were condoning pedophelia. That is just crazy, especially coming from a website that takes ads for local stripclubs. So....
...we have a plan that will benefit you and show them how advertising really works!
1. WATCH THE CONTROVERSIAL AD HERE
2. FORWARD IT TO EVERYONE YOU KNOW
3. COME SEE LOVE JERRY AND TELL THE BOX OFFICE,
"I FORWARDED YOUR AD"
4. WE'LL GIVE YOU $2 OFF OF YOUR TICKET
5. IF WE GIVE 50 PEOPLE $2 OFF WE WILL DONATE THE $800 WE WERE GOING TO SPEND ON THE AD TO OUR FRIENDS AT THE CHILD ABUSE PREVENTION EFFORT.
(We would've needed to sell 50 tickets from the ad to break even so it seems fair that if you do the advertising for us, we'll still shell out the cash)
So what do you think, folks? Should an ad be banned from a publisher's Web site simply because it contains the word "pedophile"? Which is worse, the typical strip-joint ad or a tasteful one for a work of art about pedophilia? And will Dead Tree Edition get dinged by the search-engine gods for mentioning "pedophilia," "strip clubs", and "video" all in the same article?
Pedophiles prey on innocent children. They should get two rounds behind the ear.
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