Denunciations, denials and apologies are flying after an advertisement that evokes 9/11 quickly spread around the blogosphere. AdFreak.com called attention to the purported World Wildlife Fund print ad that shows dozens of airliners taking aim at Manhattan. The copy reads: “The tsunami killed 100 times more people than 9/11. The planet is brutally powerful. Respect it. Preserve it.”
It’s enough to turn your stomach,” wrote NBC New York’s Hasani Gittens.
The Weekly Standard’s blog called it “shameful” and a mockery not only of those who died on Sept. 11 but victims of the 2004 tsunami as well.
The World Wildlife Fund responded by saying it didn’t authorize the ad, which it blasted as “offensive and tasteless.”
The ad was done last December by the agency DDB Brazil to try to win the WWF’s business in that country. The WWF said it “summarily rejected” the concept. DDB responded to the uproar with an apology — saying the people who created the ad are “no longer with the agency.”
Michelle Malkin thinks the denials “ring hollow.” She charges that DDB has “a lengthy track record of being tied vile ads that their clients keep disavowing.”
{AOL News/Matzav.com Newscenter}
