Bacardi's Find an Ugly Girlfriend Campaign is confusing

While I admit it's an offensive ad, I must remember to keep "freckled pile of cellulite" in my hopper of prepackaged insults
I don't understand the advertising angle, let alone the timeline and I'm a little late to mount the moral high-horse, feminist bloggers in the US are taking up arms keyboards to assault Bacardi for an admittedly terrible and overtly misogynistic ad campaign that they just ran for a new product.

Which is a completely accurate statement excepting for the exceptions that "just" here has the unique definition of "last year" and "new product" can be more accurately defined in this situation as "not really new at all, just not sold in America". Oh, and it also shakes out that Bacardi did not sponsor or develop the ad in any way, shape or form. From Bacardi's second official response to the backlash against the ad (text of the first response can be found here):

"...what we do know is that a third-party developed and activated this brief campaign in one small market more than a year ago without our clearance."
For those of you who are confused then about why feminist bloggers are howling with fresh indignation towards this week and calling for the blood of the company that allegedly ran the ad campaign (which has been defunct for close to a year now...), the chronology of the response is as follows:

1. May-June 2008 (Israel): A third-party advertiser runs the Find an Ugly Girlfriend Ad in a small market without Bacardi's knowledge or blessing. Israelis chuckle, product sells, summer rolls along and the ads are forgotten about.
2. ...
3. June 2009 (Israel): An independent agency reposts the ad campaign online, once again without Bacardi's authorization. Bacardi- as a corporation- is never directly linked to the ad, but their brand image most certainly is.
4. Bloggers get their hooks in the fodder, fail to check sources thoroughly, and the ascii hits the fan!

Outside of the issue of the baffling delay in this response is the fact that these advertisements are nowhere near as misogynistic as other sexy alcohol advertisements that are out there. If anything, the decision to use decidedly less-than-pulchritudinous women to sell booze should be seen as an affirmation of equality since these unattractive models are (hopefully...) not being viewed merely as sexual objects plying their bodies to sell (c)hooch.

No, loyal readers, these ads have real women in them and don't reduce the female form to a pair of horribly airbrushed thighs, a perky pair of amazing, gravity-defying, supple breasts and an amazingly perky, be-thonged ass that could deflect a bullet in an attempt to prey on man's baser nature in an attempt to turn a profit- these women have something to offer!

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Bill kills self. RIP David Carradine

It took them 37 years, but finally the people of Asia have enacted their revenge on America's most infamous yellowface actor.

Earlier this week, cult acting legend David Carradine was found hanged and naked in the closet of his Bangkok hotel room with a rope around his grasshopper. Although the BBC has since retracted the bit about being found with a rope around his wang, the original text of the article reporting his death (which I intended to post yesterday) read as follows...

"Thai police told the BBC the 72-year-old was found naked by a hotel maid in a wardrobe with a cord around his neck and genitals."

...which is about the most awesome, and fitting, way for Mr. Carradine to shuffle off of this mortal coil. If his death was suicide, as his representatives fervently deny it was, then it ranks as one of the most poignant- if puzzling- acts of self snuffing worthy of Hunter S. Thompson (who, disappointingly, only managed a single gunshot wound to the head.) If it was murder, I'd like to imagine that Carradine died as he lived: naked, screaming, and enjoying the dangerously erotic ministrations of more Thai whores than any of us are likely to see in any of our lifetimes.

RIP, Grasshopper.

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