Last week’s holiday threw the Monday-ness of Mea Culpa Mondays out of whack. Thanks a lot, Martin Luther King! We’re crawling back to normalcy.
First they took our factories, now they’ve taken our tremendous capacity for fraud
To view last week’s newspaper errors on an international scale, it’s no surprise that the two superpowers are the two superpowers, the United States and China. Sadly, they’ve got the better one. Chalk the end of January up to the red menace.
Fans of pan-Asian singing phenomenon Stephanie Sun were surprised to find her picture in magazine ads for a Shenzhen abortion clinic. Also surprised was Stephanie Sun, who had not consented for the use of her photo.
This type of thing apparently happens all the time in the East. The (Singapore) Electric Paper compiled the following:
Jolin Tsai
The Taiwanese pop princess' photo was uploaded onto Japanese adult friend-finder website's home page to recruit members in 2004.
Ruby Lin & Tammy Chen Yirong
In 2003, Japanese sex chatline company printed the two actresses' photos in gossip magazine.
Cecilia Cheung
In 2004, Japanese seller of sex toys used the Hong Kong actress' pictures of her touching herself during a concert rehearsal, in bid to peddle more goods.
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Still, in the hierarchy of bizarre products to find yourself endorsing, abortion may be king. It’s hard not to imagine which American celebrities could best promote the procedure. Alec Baldwin? Some families only need one son.
Provincial-English speakers (i.e., me) might be interested that the above spot promises a “three-minute, painless abortion procedure to get rid of accidental pregnancies.” The clinic has acknowledged that the use of the photo was inappropriate.
Insert transitional “Chinese food” joke here
Less spectacular, if only because no one has posted a graphic, was Akron, Mich. native Kristen DeGroat’s failure to sell her horse via classified ads in two local newspapers. Due to “human error,” the ad for Foxy was placed in the wrong section.
Foxy was listed with the classifieds for “Good Things to Eat.” It was corrected in some, but not all, papers.
The horse sold to a rider (not an eater). Among the bevy of calls of outrage that DeGroat received were around 60 inquiries for purchase – roughly 20 of which, were “from people interested in buying horse meat.” Apparently $200 was a fair price for a man’s aspiring equestrian grandchildren. Or to make a huge lunch.
