The overall lesson: “You can’t win, you can’t break even, so you might as well stop trying to pander to the woke at all and let the metaphorical chips fall where they may.”
Believe it or not, that innocuous ad has triggered controversy from the racial offense and grievance mob. Apparently it promotes negative black stereotypes! That’s strange: the problem in the U.S. black community is that most children are born without their parents being married at all: this happy photo rejects that reality. It also looks like a rather affluent family wedding: isn’t the negative stereotype that black families are poor? (Although, come to think of it, what up-scale wedding reception would serve spaghetti with Heinz tomato sauce from a jar?) And aren’t whites supposedly to be racists? How is an inter-racial marriage perpetuating that negative stereotype? Wait, is the stereotype that the older balck woman is wearing a hat?
No, the complaint seems to be that the ad shows the groom’s white parents and an older black woman who represents the bride’s mother. See, the ad “erased” black fathers: it implies that the bride’s black dad is off whoring, or something, and that Mom is a single mother. Who would see the ad that way, except those who embrace the negative stereotype with their own confirmation bias?
Looking at the picture objectively (that’s my job, you know), I think the groom’s father is missing, if we assume, and we can’t in Woke Ad World, that the groom isn’t also a product of an inter-racial marriage. That guy on the far left sure looks black to me. Heck, everyone in that picture except the groom might be black.
I don’t blame Heinz for pulling the ad and apologizing: they are in the business of advertising their food products, not social justice posturing. I blame the company for pandering to the inter-racial marriage propaganda, and I’m glad it bit Heinz right in its 57. You cannot make the social justice warriors happy: they are looking for reasons to attack and condemn you, and will always find some.
It would be most appropriate for a food products company to have an official policy if “Bite me!”
Ethics Alarms 
I assumed the black mother was a widow, her husband having been gunned down in the streets of Chicago, an innocent man caught in the crossfire of rival gangs.
Oh crap, now I’m doing it…
You owe me a keyboard…
If people were honest, they would admit that there’s no context to the relationship of any of those people. While it might not be “plausible” it might be “possible” that the bride is sitting next to her white parents and the groom is next to his black mother.
It’s entirely plausible that those are her white adoptive parents and she invited her birth mother who is seated next to the groom.
It’s possible that those are the members of the bridal party. I’ve never seen a bride and groom sit with their parents at a wedding, they sit at a head table with the bridal party.
Anyway, this was a fun whimsical ad, and I like it.
I agree. The dude on the left looks like a late-life step dad after the red head’s real dad dropped dead of cancer even though the mom nagged him about going to the doctor. Alas, he was apparently stubborn.
Nicely done.
jvb
On taking a second look, I’m thinking these are the grandparents. Aren’t most parents in their 40s and 50s when their kids get married? Not already drawing Social Security.
Not to mention the 3 piece suits. Maybe these folks are refugees from the 60s….
I saw it that way because I live in an area which is heavily skewed with that demographic.
I thought the problem was going to be that the black person is a sloppy eater. (Insert racist stereotype rant here.)
As a simple matter of composition (and I am no expert on that), you need an uneven number of people in order to place one person at the center of the picture.
Okay, they could have had one white parent.
Why omit the black father? Well, they probably have the lowest life expectancy rate amongst the four demographics. So, view this as social commentary on the plight black males face with respect to unequal health outcomes.
-Jut
That guy on the far left sure looks black to me. Heck, everyone in that picture except the groom might be black.
I disagree with this statement, but it doesn’t matter. I looks like they took 3 random people and placed them next to a bride and groom. One would assume the parents were sitting next to the children, but then the parents don’t seem to match. With no context, there should be nothing to take offense at.
Before I read your full post, my first question was why someone would serve any type of spaghetti and sauce at a wedding luncheon/dinner….and what is the groom going to do with his knife?
No kidding. I rarely eat spaghetti at home because of the mess it makes…NEVER at a wedding. Short pasta like rigatoni or simple shells makes way more sense at a wedding. Dad there on the left will need a bath after eating it…if he bothers to either wake up or stop staring at the bride’s chest – the miserable lecher that he obviously is.
The bride is showing appalling manners. Instead of politely swirling the spaghetti, she’s going to be slurping that Rapunzel-esque bite of spaghetti for five minutes, at which point she’s going to have sauce splattered all over the place. And clearly, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, because like father like son, that look on the groom’s face says it all…”if you can get all THAT in her mouth…”
This ad gets more debauched with every second. What is wrong with the Heinz family for subjecting us to this?
And how in the heck is this “based on a true story”?!?
“The bride is showing appalling manners. Instead of politely swirling the spaghetti, she’s going to be slurping that Rapunzel-esque bite of spaghetti for five minutes, at which point she’s going to have sauce splattered all over the place.”
Agreed. She clearly is not Italian because there is not a spoon in sight (not to mention the clueless groom with a knife). What a bunch of philistines. Have they no clue how to eat spaghetti?
jvb
The reference to philistines was laugh-out-loud funny. I can’t you how many times I heard that from my parents when I was growing up.
I am more offended/concerned by the linked article in the Guardian’s plea for support at the end of the article, which contains this gem:
“Yet, from Elon Musk to the Murdochs, a small number of billionaire owners have a powerful hold on so much of the information that reaches the public about what’s happening in the world. The Guardian is different. We have no billionaire owner or shareholders to consider. Our journalism is produced to serve the public interest – not profit motives.”
Why is Musk a threat to democracy? Why the Murdochs? What about the owners of CNN and MSNBC, NBC, ABC, CBS, et al? They are concerned with profits just as any other company or business. They get a pass because they are committed to a Harris Presidency and desperately need to defeat that mean, ol’ Trump?
jvb
The good news: the insufferable Teresa Heinz Kerry, and her tupid, insufferable, chronically gold digging, faux Irish Catholic husband, will have a little egg on their faces.
On the alleged controversy itself, the complainers haven’t been paying attention. Look at any television commercial. Each one must include at least one random black person. Preferably, the commercial must star a black person. The advertisers must have thought once they made the bride in the center black, they were home free. Their ad was statistically correct.
“That guy on the far left sure looks black to me.”
Our newest (black) MMSD Superintendent, “a local boy with a national reputation who wants to return home to Madison.” Taxpayers dinged $100 large for this “fish-in-a-barrel” forgone conclusion
Care to venture a guess why he was hired…?
PWS
Ahh, Big Ketchup. What a dumb ad. Anyone catch the, “Based on a true story” at bottom right?
It looks like all the ads in the series have five subjects, including one featuring Hillary Clinton and what seem to be four child beneficiaries of Clinton Foundation charity (based on the fact that Hillary appears to have kept nearly all of the sauce for herself).