Sears has pulled the Benetton clothes line from the shelves, and probably more will follow… what do you think of this whole thing??
http://www.foxnews.com/fn99/entertainment/oscar00/feature_boys.sml
http://www.benetton.com/index.cgi http://www.benetton.com/deathrow/index.html
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From an actual catalog: “Disco balls create an enchanting, dazzling effect of light shafts, adding movement and glamour to any occasion”
the Abrams’ bris was certainly memorable
O p a l C a t
www.opalcat.com
I’m squarely with Sears on this one. They are under no obligation to give tacit support to a company who attempts to make money by presenting heinous murderers in a sympathetic light.
IMO, Benetton should have interviewed the families of the victims instead of the actual murderers. But then their avant garde ads would just be regular old run-of-the-mill stuff. Kids lose a father to an monster. Ho-hum.
More than just about anything, I hate to see people so sympathetic to the human animals in our midst while totally disregarding the actual victims. Especially to try to make a buck.
I’m no lawyer, but I hope the suit filed by the state of Missouri against Benetton for misrepresentation in getting the interviews hits Benetton hard.
The odd thing is, Benetton seems to think ads that actually ATTRACT buyers are beneath them. Their stupid, pompous, meaningless ads have been a sales disaster for YEARS now (their market share in the USA has dwindled to almost nothing). It’s almost as if they’d rather be known as a cutting edge company than a company that makes money!
Astorian, that’s a self correcting problem, isn’t it? 
I personally dislike commercials that don’t attempt to explain why a product is good. Those happy “our company rocks” commercials suck hard. So the completely insane commercials a lot of clothing companies use strike me as a complete waste of time.
(Well, not like I like any commercials, but some I dislike less.)
I remember a Benneton ad from a few years back, put together by Spike Lee. In it, he argued that the AIDS virus was created by Ronald Reagan to kill homosexuals. And there were a lot of pictures of naked white and African American babies hugging.
What bothered me about it most, I guess, is what still applies to these inane ads today.
Benneton is a clothing company thatcan’t even make shirts that won’t shrink after a single washing. How are they an authority on anything?