Tipping the scales of histrionics

I`m a cat person. I`m not a cat-person-who-hates-dogs person, but my preference definitely leans towards the feline species. There is something about a dachshund, though, that sets my heart a-trembling with the desire to kiss it on its little worried-looking little forehead. So I guess I could be called a cat-and-dachshund person.

Having thus painted myself as someone with a genuine love for the species, I feel that I can comment on the latest bit of consumer idiocy without fear of being labelled as a hater of animals. Some woman, who obviously has too much time on her hands, has registered a complaint with the Advertising Standards Authority that the Tastic television ad currently on air promotes cruelty to animals.

The ad shows a family indulging in a feast of rice, and enjoying it so much that they finish off every last grain. The upshot of all this gluttony is that poor Fido, apparently usually the recipient of table scraps, gets left with an empty bowl. The ad isn`t a particularly good one, but it makes its point. The sorrowful eyes of the "neglected" dachshund do tug at the heartstrings, but come on! Even the most rampant animal rights activist would be hard-pressed to find anything to complain about.

My issue with people like these is that it is they who are detracting from the severity of certain societal problems.

Georgina Guedes, Journalist, ITWeb

But this woman did. Whether her complaint was spurred by the guilt she felt at the stirring of her own natural inclination towards animal cruelty, or by her belief that the general population of our country will do anything to emulate the saccharine reality of television ads, we`ll never know. However, I for one, am certain that no individual out there would be any less likely to give dinner to his dog because he saw poor Fido deprived of scraps in the Tastic ad. Beyond that, there`s no way that the ad belittles the problem of animal cruelty. Feeding leftover rice to your pet has never been part of any good owner`s care routine, so the failure to do so certainly doesn`t suggest neglect of any kind.

I can only hope that the Advertising Standards Authority doesn`t buy in to her histrionics. While surfing its site, I came across another complaint that filled me with another bout of ire about the complainant rather than the ad.

As part of Musica`s campaign, featuring a fictional "Unexplained Bad Gift Karma Show", they showed a young girl whose father took her swing away because she failed to give him a Musica gift voucher. This particular ad was titled "Save a Child" which was the source of the agitation. The only people that connected this with a possible tendency towards child abuse were the sanctimonious people complaining. Their outrage became a moot point as the ad was flighted once only as part of a larger campaign.

My issue with people like these is that it is they who are detracting from the severity of certain societal problems. Rather than championing their cause, they are making it look silly by taking offence at the least provocation. Like the female professional who cries "sexual harassment" every time a colleague so much as looks at her funny, these people are making a laughing stock of the very real issue of abuse.

Whenever I get too annoyed about people who detract from the very causes they are seeking to highlight, the movie The Last Supper springs to mind. The premise was that a group of liberal friends, incited by the blathering of a conservative television talk show host, decide to cull from their community those people whose views they ironically deem intolerant. The show winds to a crux with the accidental arrival in their house of the talk show host, who makes a very salient point. Society needs the people leaning too strongly in one direction to balance out those leaning too strongly in the other. This equilibrium allows those of us in the middle to comfortably maintain our position. With no push, there would be no pull.

So bring on the caterwauling activists, roll-out their inane complaints; somewhere between their melodrama and the actions of the truly despicable fringe is a nice moderate middle ground where the rest of us can stay.