More Bitter Brits
Don’t worry — this time, it’s the Jews!
A political storm is brewing over the Labour Party’s plans to launch a campaigning poster that has been branded offensive to Jews.
The advert depicts party leader Michael Howard and shadow chancellor Oliver Letwin, who are both Jewish, as flying pigs.
[…] Tory candidate Andrew Mennear, who is also councillor for the Frognal and Fitzjohns ward, said: “I am shocked that the Labour Party finds it remotely clever or amusing to impose the faces of probably the two highest profile Jewish politicians on to flying pigs.”
Full story and commentary available from our friends at Daily Jews.
I don’t really find the ad offensive, but it does look a little…amateurish. I mean, it looks more like middle school Photoshop than Madison Avenue. Why isn’t Brittan’s most powerful political party investing some actually money/effort into their ads? Maybe I’m being superficial, but I kind of wonder what the other three ads looked like.
the reason the ad looks amateurish is that it’s not (yet) an ad as such – as far as I understand, it’s simply one of a bunch of potential designs that the labour party put forward for consulation. At which point, as one might expect, people said “hang on, they’re Jewish, this isn’t such a great idea”. However, in the meantime, the London Jewish Standard has blown the story out of all proportion (it was front page headlines “LABOUR’S INSULT TO HOWARD’S RELIGION” on Friday).
So there you go. It wasn’t really big news, but yet again the papers are screaming “Jewish Anger at…” Not much anger around here – NW London ghetto – as far as I have detected (indeed, it didn’t even make it into any of the shul conversations I had or overheard this shabbos). Yet again, I think I find the papers’ reactions rather more worrying than the thing they’re getting worked up about.
Oh, and Britain’s still a nice place to be Jewish 🙂