Landmine Double Standards

Via Dirty Tricks comes a report that an ad released by the U.N. Mine Action Service is being met with deafening silence from American TV networks. So far, the only U.S. television outlet to agree to run it has been The History Channel, which aired it just once, in the middle of the night.

Guy Barnett, creative director at Brooklyn Brothers, the New York City ad agency that produced the spot for the U.N. Mine Action Service said, "We foolishly thought that people would think that the message...would be important enough to show."

You can see the ad at MSNBC.

It begins with a scene familiar in suburban America — school girls in soccer uniforms climb out of their family SUVs and rush out onto the field, pony tails bobbing behind them, as parents shout encouragement.

But just as the game gets under way, a blast pierces the excitement. Panic and chaos erupt; there are injuries. A mother screams in anguish as her husband emerges from the field carrying the lifeless body of their daughter. The screen goes dark and a tagline comes up: "If there were land mines here, would you stand for them anywhere?"

So, an advertisement about landmines is too horrific for Americans to view, but Americans are happy to vote for an administration that refused to sign the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty which previous administrations had commited the US to. Children die in other countries every day because of US-made landmines.

Doesn't that make you sick?