Remember Truck Nutz? That may the name of Ben and Jerry's next flavor, if Schweddy Balls catches on...
I’ve been driving or lecturing all day and may be a little punchy. Yet having last posted on Ethics Alarms about Ben and Jerry’s crude homage to Alec Baldwin (FULL DISCLOSURE: I would be likely to find any homage to Alec Baldwin offensive, since I find Alec Baldwin offensive) and juvenile word-play, I found myself wondering: which is more uncivil and disrespectful, Ben and Jerry’s new Schweddy Balls ice cream, or the large, red, swinging plastic scrotum decorations that some truckers hand at the tail end of their rigs, Truck Nutz?
So that’s your Ethics Quiz, dear readers, as we head into the weekend: Which is more arrogantly disdainful of public decorum, decency, and respect for one’s fellow community members?
The Case Against Truck Nutz
From my post on the topic:
“…hanging big plastic, swinging balls in a big red plastic scrotum on the back of your truck for all to see is an American right, like the freedom to worship as one chooses, the right to bear arms, and thousands of varieties of gross, inconsiderate, crass, stupid, rude and ugly behavior. We can use the First Amendment, as so many thinkers, philosophers, patriots, activists, writers, journalists, and artists have and do, to enrich the culture and life of this country, or we can use it to make the nation coarser, cruder, and dumb. There is no honor or achievement in the latter. Truck Nutz are legal, but they are not civil, tasteful, polite or appropriate for public display, and as a consequence those who use the precious freedom of U.S. citizenship to force other users of the roadways to look at their poor excuse for wit are unethical.”
They are also, though I recognize that this is subjective, not especially funny.
The Case For Truck Nutz
Truck Nutz is mostly (but not exclusively) seen and understood by adult drivers, who are also most likely to get the “joke,” such as it is. The decoration is also not too great an escalation from past trucker practices, which have included semi-pornographic images of young women in varying stages of undress.
The Case Against Schweddy Balls Ice Cream
Kids eat ice cream…little kids, who should not have to hear awkward explanation about what “schweddy balls” means. I do not want to see the next generation molded by giving every eight-year old with an ice cream the opportunity to sexually harass any female, or male, of any age by asking them, “Do you want to lick my Schweddy Balls?” I do not want to read the litigation over an executive doing that in the workplace, either, and then arguing, “What? It’s illegal to ask someone to taste ice cream now?”
My main objection, I think, is that this is just the kind of arrogant, elitist, “we can break the rules because we’re famous and cool” attitude that so many celebrities offer to the culture, without caring about the consequences. As I noted in a comment to the previous post, the ice cream flavor is in the category of intentionally offensive graphic display, along with Confederate battle flags. In the case of the ice cream, it is an effort to intentionally offend those who think blatant sexual references don’t belong in mixed company and public venues where it is not expected, because the creators of the flavor have contempt for anyone with more respect for decorum than they have. They also want to make sure that, in the future, blatant sexual references in mixed company and public venues are expected, as if that will be an improvement. That was the world envisioned in Stanley Kubrick’s “A Clockwork Orange.” I don’t want to live in that ugly world, though I concede that it is getting here fast.
The Case Against Schweddy Balls Ice Cream
It’s kind of funny.
My verdict? It’s close, but Schweddy Balls is more uncivil, because I hold makers of family-friendly dessert products to a higher standard than truckers.
The presence of either the truck decoration or the ice cream favor in our society, however, is the work of utter jerks.
Ethics Alarms 
Ah…but I can avoid ice cream cases much more easily than I can avoid trucks on the open road. How many people will look into a stationary ice cream freezer vs the number that will be exposed to one of those trucks?
So, I agree with you on the choice from a civility point of view, but must vote the other way from an exposure viewpoint.
UNLESS, it’s a Schweddy Balls ice cream truck.
With Trick Nutz!
I also slightly disagree because the Truck Nuts are more graphic. It’s ACUTALLY a sculpture of a scrotum. Even with the florid descriptor “Scweddy,” a sculpture of a scrotum is worth a thousand words.
How could anything that inspires a car scrotum vs. schweddy balls standoff be wrong?
But car scrotum is worse.
Yes, children eat ice cream, but in general, children do not purchase ice cream. Parents will be the ones getting it from the store, and if their children are not old enough or mature enough to handle a relatively mild double entendre, then those parents can elect to purchase any of the literally hundreds of other brands and varieties of ice cream. And if they really, really want to give their children the Schweddy Balls ice cream, there’s no reason why they need to show them the packaging, much less explain the name to them. You say you shouldn’t have to hear that awkward explanation. Fine, well why do you? Is it really so difficult for a tactful adult to say, in the rare circumstances in which the question is brought up, “It’s named for a guy, and the balls are malt balls”? For this to really corrupt the minds of our youth, they would have to not only see it, but actually understand it.
Also, while I grant that I have no statistics on this, I get the impression that children are far from being the primary consumers of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream. In my experience, Ben and Jerry’s is bought by adults, college age or higher, for themselves. Children eat ice cream, but they’re not the only ones who eat ice cream, and I’m sure they’re not the ones to whom this is being marketed. I understand that the issue here is just exposure, but I think you are overstating the extent of that exposure.
That’s why I think Truck Nutz are much more crude and disrespectful. They are in plain sight, not tucked inside an ice cream case. (Incidentally, “ew” to that thought.) Not only might kids see them, nothing can really prevent kids from seeing them. And once they do, seeing them is enough. Even if a child has no idea what a scrotum looks like, it seems to me it would be a hell of a lot more difficult to dodge the question “What’s that giant red thing,” than “Why is it called Schweddy Balls”? Put simply, I think a depiction of something unsavory is always more crude than an allusion to something unsavory.
Every person I know who has ever seen and commented on Truck Nutz, male or female, agrees with me that anyone putting those on a vehicle is not only an idiot, but feels the need to use them to make up for a lack thereof on their actual person.