Saturday, January 27, 2007

KY Humane Society ads may be no laughing matter to pets--or parents

I was quoted in the Louisville Courier-Journal yesterday on a new campaign by the Kentucky Humane Society to promote its "SNIP" clinic to spay and neuter animals. The ads are causing a controversy because they use some rather tasteless language to get attention.

Some of them are simply, as one of their spokespersons said, "edgy"--and funny. In one, a dog is pictured, looking at the viewer, with the caption, "You're going to cut off my what?" The others, however, I can't mention on this family-friendly blog.

When the CJ reporter called, I simply responded that some of them were funny, but many were definitely "R" rated--and that the animals that appeared in the ads must have the same talent agent as Dakota Fanning.

Besides, most pets would not consider this a laughing matter.

Seriously, I can't imagine this will play well around the state. Is there some reason that, in encouraging people to make sure their pets don't have offspring, we have to contribute the explicitness of our public discourse that, in the end, only undermines the social stigma of casual sex that is one of the few things that really works to discourage our young people from acting like the animals portrayed in these ads?

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