Thursday, August 14, 2008

Cultural Sensitivity FAIL

OOOPS. Nice one, Spain. Dumbasses.

3 comments:

Arvay said...

Isn't that amazing? Takes me back 20 years, to grammar school. I truly do believe that they meant no offense, because if they had known that that was offensive, they wouldn't have published it in the newspaper. However, their apology was lame. "We're sorry if we offended you..." classic non-apology

The Enforcer said...

Its always easier to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission...even if it's a non-apology that's offered.

But yeah, the Spanish government released a statement saying that despite all the public noise the ad created, they still didn't understand why everyone found it so offensive. It really did seem like they had NO idea that people might be upset...

Miss E. said...

When I lived in Spain (what, ten years ago now,) there was a television ad that had a Chinese family trying to eat Jamon Serrano with chopsticks. I felt that racism there was actually pretty intense. Many of the Chicanos that were part of our group felt that they were very racist towards them. Its pretty pervasive and they don't think that they are racist, in fact, they felt that we were the racists, but it was latent racism, as opposed to overt. Nice.