Our warm thanks to Chris Scott for alerting us to this.
The gambling outlet Paddy Power has just financed an advert titled, ‘Paddy Power Poker helps men get rid of their wives in new TV advert’. Except, of course, it hasn’t. We need to do the customary gender switch to arrive at the truth, ‘Paddy Power Bingo helps women get rid of their husbands in new TV advert.’ Chris tells us:
I’ve just made a formal complaint to the Advertising Standards Authority (‘ASA’) about the new Paddy Power Bingo advert. It shows a supposedly funny ‘husband removal service’ which involves the husband being tied up, yanked violently out of the house via the window, and hurled into the back of a van. As I said in my complaint, what would be the reaction to a ‘wife removal service’ with a female subject to a violent abduction?
You can see the ad at:
Chris makes a good point, which is why we’ve just sent our own complaint to the ASA, on the grounds that the advert is sexist and offensive to men in general, and to husbands in particular. Given the ease with which British women have ejected husbands from their homes for 30+ years, then relied on the state to extract money from their ex-husbands whilst simultaneously denying them access to their children, the sexist nature of this advertisement is deplorable. We invite you to join us in making a formal complaint to the ASA.
A six-page leaflet from the ASA on making a complaint:
http://www.asa.org.uk/Consumers/~/media/Files/ASA/Misc/ASA_consumer_complaints_single_final.ashx
The link to the start of the process for making an online complaint to the ASA (the whole process doesn’t take long):
http://www.asa.org.uk/Consumers/How-to-complain/Online-Form/Step1.aspx
Now if you want to go the whole hog, I invite you to add a comment to the Paddy Power Bingo Facebook page, as I just have:
http://j4mb.org.uk/wp-admin/post.php?post=1806&action=edit&message=6&postpost=v2
Thanks Chris. The story’s attracted more interest than I’d ever have thought possible, so thanks for pointing me to it.
I have also added a comment on their Facebook page but hold out no great hope that this type of puerile rubbish that passes for humour will be mollified. I can only hope that a significant number of official complaints via the ASA may give them pause for thought.
Thanks for your good points. The Paddy Power story has attracted many more blog hits than I was anticipating. It’s clearly struck a chord, and quite a few people have emailed me to say they’re making official complaints to the ASA. Men are heartily sick of the relentless anti-male sniping in adverts, TV programmes… and everywhere else. About time!
The latest batch of Bingo ads are obviously the mastermind (sorry, micro-mind) of the same marketing agency. it appears that their sole intent is to ridicule, demean, besmirch, objectify, belittle or mock men in the hope that they’ll appeal to the female audience. I’m guessing this strategy must work as a tactic for them but I do wish more people would complain because it really is sexist and very damaging to society, particularly our young generation who are easily influenced and led by the media, particularly visual film and TV. This problem is so deeply rooted into our society right now and I think it’s going to be really hard to get out of the rut that we seem to be in thanks to feminism. The issue of man-bashing comes in lots of guises; there’s the in-your-face obvious ones such as the bingo ads, and then there are the hidden messages which embed themselves into people’s unconscious minds. I’ve been watching Judge Judy lately and her devious sexism against men is truly astonishing – but you have to look and listen closely. For example, she often makes remarks to female plaintiffs suggesting that they should know better than to trust a man. I’ve never heard her say anything of the kind with the genders reversed. I’ve heard her say how men can be dirty, untidy, forgetful, useless etc. etc. and yet I’m still listening closely for her to make similar claims about women. Not heard anything yet and I doubt I will. She’s a classic case of a smart woman exploiting her power within the media to surreptitiously exploit feminist hate in a neat little package that worms itself into peoples unconscious minds thus conveniently replicating and perpetuating the portfolio of feminist ideologies. The ironic thing is that just as many women as men are on that programme being sued for a plethora of reasons that show them as being no more decent than men! Yet Judy remains relentless with her little snipes against men. shame on her!
What a disrespectful advert.