Congratulations Lynn for an interesting piece this morning, reminiscent in some ways of the Puma Ad, the Volkswagon Ad, and some other hoaxes or rogue ads.

(You may wish to tell Tracy, et. al., how this journalism thing works.)

Okay, to Feministing doesn't yet know it's a hoax and they think it's a real campaign. That's fine.

Assuming the ad is real,

LOOK AT ALL OF THESE SO CALLED SMART FEMINISTS THINK THAT BENETTON AND THINK THAT BENETTON IS TRYING TO SELL CLOTHES!!!

God, how stupid, and cynical, and hateful do you have to be to look at the ad, with it's "Colors of Domestic Violence" and think that Benetton is trying to sell clothes and not trying to raise awareness?

The hatred of modern feminists is appalling, and this is evidence that it is blinding otherwise smart women and keeping them from seeing the obvious.

At least someone in the comments has finally pointed out that it's a hoax. AFTER someone else looked on the Benetton site for the campaign, didn't find it, and failed to draw the obvious conclusion. We'll see if the hoax comment stems the tide.

If you don't have time to verify everything, that's understandable. But if you have time to blog and wax poetic about people not thinking critically, you have time to verify before spouting off.

--TR

I saw the post last night, emailed Anissa Nouhi at Benetton, got a response from her shortly after she must have spoken with Salon, called and chatted with Ms. Nouhi, and then posted the conversation's main content here.

http://writeslikeshetalks.blogspot.com/2007/05/colors-of-domestic-violencefake-not.html

Wow. Anyone can get punked. It just shows us that, yes, you need to check things out for yourself. The more outragoues, the more likely you need to check.

people thought that was real? I'm surprised.

When Benetton had a 2-page ad showing a young man dying of AIDS (as iin breathing his last) while his anguished family sat around his hospital bed?

I wouldn't have automatically assumed "hoax", but were I a journalist, I'd verify (and I'm so glad it wasn't Benetton's campaign).

Journalistic laziness and hysteria at feministing. Thank you Lynn for showing the girls how it's done.

this is Benetton, after all. The company that ran ads of people dying of AIDS, ran pictures of vicious, death row murderers as poor innocent victims of the system, etc. This seems just about up their alley.