While driving down Virginia’s crowded Route 28 this afternoon, I heard a radio spot from our good friends at UNICEF that almost caused me to drive right off the road. The announcer solemnly intoned that with your help, UNICEF would create “a tsunami of love, a tsunami of hope” for children affected by the Dec. 26th disaster in the east Indies.
A “tsunami of love?” Even if these people have their hearts in the right places, just how tone-deaf is this organization? Apart from the fact that “tsunami of love” sounds like it could be the title of a song by Def Leppard, who actually thought that this was clever? Somehow, I cannot imagine soldiers liberating the German death camps of WWII telling prisoners, “We are going to build you a concentration camp of compassion!” or Amnesty International offering “a gulag of love” to political prisoners.
UNICEF must have gotten complaints about this, because the downloadable version of the ad available on their website now says “a wave of love.” Which isn’t a huge improvement, actually.
Of course, that still is not as bad as this Seattle Times column, from Saturday which dismisses tsunami victims as “clutter” apparently worthy of a tsunami of scorn for deigning to develop beaches into tourist attractions.
(A tip o’ the hat to Jesse Walker of Reason Online for the Seattle Times link.)