New Zealand diplomat laments candy controversy

As a follow-up to the story posted Thursday, April 23, 2009 @ 9:50AM

New Zealand's high commissioner in Ottawa is disappointed her fellow Kiwis are angry at a Canadian Inuk woman who raised concerns about the brand name of a marshmallow candy popular in the southern island nation.

Kate Lackey notes that people in New Zealand are as loyal to the colourful "Eskimos" treats as Canadians are to Tim Hortons coffee. But rude radio comments and online calls for the 21-year-old tourist to head back to Canada are not acceptable, she said Thursday.

"I would hope New Zealanders would be a bit more courteous and understanding," Lackey said.

"I'll probably get into trouble in New Zealand for saying such a thing, but often there's a sort of 'rednecky' element ... The people who get on talk-back (radio) and stuff haven't had time to think through a bit more deeply how the other person might feel."

Canadian Seeka Veevee Parsons made headlines across New Zealand this week after complaining to a TV crew about the candies, which are shaped like a person bundled up in a furry parka and are sold in a bag bearing the picture of a smiling Inuk in front of an igloo.

Born in Iqaluit, Nunavut, and raised in Glovertown, N.L., Veevee Parsons said the word "Eskimo" was originally an insult meaning ``eater of raw flesh." As a child, she was teased and called a ``dirty Eskimo girl."

"I think the term 'Eskimo' can almost be related to the term 'savage' or 'Indian' or maybe even the 'n-word' for African-American people," she said in an interview earlier this week.

The word was replaced in Canada with "Inuk" and "Inuit" in the 1970s, although it is still common in Alaska. And it's still part of the name used by the Edmonton team in the Canadian Football League.

The "Eskimos" debate has led to phone calls and emails flooding New Zealand radio and television shows and has become a prime topic for bloggers. Most are overwhelmingly in support of keeping the name. Some have called Veevee Parsons a "busybody" and a ``b*tch." Many want her to go home.

"Will the Inuit stop clubbing fur seals to death? We don't come to your country and tell you how to live," one man wrote on the 3News television website.

The Cadbury Pascall company has defended its product and refuses to change it.

Lackey said that's a business decision she won't interfere with.

"That sounds a wee bit hard-hearted, but, as I say, this particular candy has been around for so long. I think New Zealanders would have had absolutely no idea that it might cause offence to another people."

She said she has the highest admiration for the Inuit and has travelled across Canada's North.

Veevee Parsons has spent the last two months trekking around New Zealand and planned to leave in a few weeks to tour Australia. She is scheduled to fly home in June.

Before her return, she wants to mail packages of Eskimos candies to Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Nunavut Premier Eva Aariak to bring their attention to the confections.

"I just hope Seeka enjoys her stay in New Zealand and that she doesn't feel that the bulk of New Zealand people would be other than hospitable to a young Canadian on our shores," said Lackey.

She said she doesn't think the candy controversy would ever cause a political rift between the two nations.

"You could hardly have two countries closer together in attitudes and values than Canada and New Zealand," said Lackey.

"I often say that for New Zealanders, Canada seems like the least foreign country in the world. People arrive here and, after about 10 minutes, they feel at home."

Eskimo Lolly: Candy...or racial slur?

By her own calculation, Canadian tourist Seeka Lee Veevee Parsons is one unpopular woman in New Zealand right now – just because of what she insists she is not: an Eskimo.

The Inuit woman is garnering headlines – and animosity – for suggesting a favourite New Zealand candy, the Eskimo Lolly, is both racist and improper.

Veevee Parsons said yesterday she has been shocked at the hostility she has created in the country she loved from the time she arrived two months ago by simply raising the issue of the candy she saw recently in a New Zealand store.

"Calling someone an Eskimo is no longer responsible," said the 21-year-old Parsons, who is from Nunavut but has been on an extended work holiday in New Zealand.

"When I was a kid, they used to call me a dirty Eskimo girl and it's a term that shouldn't be used anymore especially on a candy. Is it right that people go around eating shapes of people of another culture?"

The Eskimo Lolly, described as "cherished" and a "treasure" to New Zealanders, is a multi-coloured marshmallow candy in the shape of a person wearing a thick hooded jacket in front of an igloo.

Veevee Parsons, who is working at an organic farm near the city of Rotorua, said she made the comments to a television station after being interviewed at a tourist information booth she was visiting.

Ever since the story about her complaint aired on one television station earlier this week, Veevee Parsons has been interviewed nearly a dozen times and viewers and readers have been responding by the thousands to her concerns. Most of the response has been personal attacks against Veevee Parsons, with a few telling her to "go home" and others insisting she shut up. "I eat jelly babies. It doesn't mean that I like to bite small children. It's just confectionary," wrote one reader. "If you don't like it, how about you don't buy it!"

Daniel Ellis, spokesperson for Cadbury/Pascall, the maker of the candy in New Zealand, said in an interview with media that he's been surprised by the strong public opinions provoked by Veevee Parsons' comments. In the 54-year history of the Eskimo Lolly, there have been only two complaints about the use of the term, Ellis said.

"People felt one of their favourites was being discussed in such a way that they've had to voice their opinion," said Ellis. "New Zealanders are very patriotic."

The company, while it takes the complaint seriously, doesn't intend to change the name.

A non-sports fan, Veevee Parsons said she didn't even know there was a CFL (Canadian Football League) team called the Edmonton Eskimos until her family pointed out to her that it's her grandfather's favourite team.

Veevee Parsons plans to return home to Canada in June and said she intends to send the candy to Prime Minister Stephen Harper in hopes he'll bring the issue up.

University of British Columbia social work professor Frank Tester, who researches Inuit social history, said the term Eskimo, which originated from the Cree language and translates as eater of raw meat, has never been an appropriate term. He said despite complaints, Eskimo Pie is still for sale and one Vancouver bagel shop shows a toothless Inuit poster to tout its soft bagels.

Veevee Parsons' uncle, David Veevee, who lives in Iqaluit, said he's been surprised at the uproar created over his niece's statements about the use of the word Eskimo.

"It doesn't bother me if people down there in the south use the word Eskimo," said Veevee. "They just don't know any better. So maybe if what she's doing is educating them, that's all right. It's just a candy, after all."

So what do you think? is it simply a candy? or a direct, hateful racial slur? and what ABOUT the names used by those other brands? like Eskimo Pie, or sports teams like Edmonton Eskimos, Washington Redskins, Kansas City Chiefs, Cleveland Indians, or The Chicago Blackhawks logo? is it time, now in 2009 to look into these as well? What do you think?

Ice-Cream ads using Obama spark racism complaints

Obama ice cream, anyone? Chocolate-vanilla ice cream is one of several Russian products being marketed using America's first black president, even as critics call the ads racist.

Other ads featuring US President Barack Obama have promoted tanning salons and tooth-whitening services.

But the creator of one Obama-themed ad -- for ice cream bars which have a chocolate-flavoured centre embedded in a layer of vanilla -- insisted Friday that it was not racist and should be seen as a joke.

The ad for Duet ice cream bars features a smiling, cartoonish black man flashing a V-for-Victory sign in front of the US Capitol, along with the Russian slogan: "Everyone's talking about it: dark, inside white!"

Some blasted the ad as insensitive after it surfaced on English-language websites this week. "This is just racist," said one visitor to the Ads of the World website, while another asked: "Is the ice cream as tasteless as the ad?"

Andrei Gubaidullin, who created the ad, told AFP that it was not racist and that Russia simply had a different attitude to race than Western countries.

"For Russia, this is not racist. It is fun and that's it," said Gubaidullin, creative director at Voskhod advertising agency, based in the Urals Mountains city of Yekaterinburg.

"We don't consider teasing ethnic groups racist. It is just seen as a joke," he said by telephone, adding that he personally liked Obama.

In another ad to play on Obama's race, a leaflet recently seen in Moscow used a photograph of the US president to promote a tanning salon.

A leaflet circulated in Moscow last fall showed a smiling Obama with the slogan "Full Dental Democracy!" to promote the MeraDent chain of dental clinics.

People of African descent are relatively few in Russia and those who do live in the country often complain of racism.

Racism row over chimp cartoon sparks heated debate

Racist, unfunny, offensive, unpatriotic, hilarious, confusing, lame.



Reactions are as mixed as they are strong to Tuesday's New York Post cartoon that depicted the police shooting of a chimpanzee. Two police officers, one with a smoking gun, are near the chimp's bullet-pierced body. "They'll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill," one officer says.

The Post's Sean Delonas used a typical editorial cartoon "trope" of linking two current news stories: the shooting of a chimp after it mauled a Connecticut woman and President Obama's signing of the stimulus bill.

But soon after the issue hit newsstands, the Rev. Al Sharpton -- and other black opinion makers across the country blasted the cartoon as an attack on Obama's skin color and African-Americans in general.

"Being that the stimulus bill has been the first legislative victory of President Barack Obama and has become synonymous with him, it is not a reach to wonder: Are they inferring that a monkey wrote the last bill?" Sharpton said.

Jelani Cobb, a Spelman College history professor and the author of a forthcoming book about Obama, says the cartoon offended on many levels.

He winced at the cartoon's gun violence as a stoker to the nervousness some feel about the safety of a black president in a historically racist country.

"When I looked at it, there was no getting around the implications of it," Cobb said. "Clearly anyone with an iota of sense knows the close association of black people and the primate imagery."

Dozens of cartoonists weighed in on dailycartoonist.com. Some said it was a simpleton move to use the tired metaphor of a monkey to make fun of something -- no matter what it was. One poster wrote, "Wha...?" pointing out that Obama didn't write the stimulus package; lawmakers did.

On the cartoon "danger scale" of 1 to 10, the chimp cartoon scored a 9, Dilbert creator Scott Adams says.

Adams liked the cartoon, but judging its overall worthiness is difficult -- a gauge best measured by an audience, not the cartoonist, he said.

"Any cartoon has to be a little bit dangerous, and he's definitely achieved that," he said. "You have to perceive that the cartoonist is in personal danger or there's something dangerous about it, that at the cartoonist's next cocktail party, half of the people there are going to want to poison his drink."

Just like George Carlin's seven dirty words, there are also no-no's for cartoons, Adams said. "He's got everything you shouldn't have," he said. "Gunfire, that's the one thing you cannot get away with. And then he's got violence against animals, also a pretty big no."

New York Post editor Col Allan referred calls to a public relations representative who sent out this statement: "The cartoon is a clear parody of a current news event, to wit the shooting of a violent chimpanzee in Connecticut. It broadly mocks Washington's efforts to revive the economy. Again, Al Sharpton reveals himself as nothing more than a publicity opportunist."

Delonas is not giving interviews, the PR rep said.

If there is any apology due, it shouldn't come from the cartoonist, insisted Ted Rall, the president of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists, whose cartoons run in 100 publications across the United States.

An editor should object if there is a strong possibility that a cartoon will not resonate the way the cartoonist wanted, he said. Cartoonists have to be free to be creative, to not edit themselves during the drawing process.

"He was trying trying to jam two stories together, and unfortunately this is what a lot of lame editors like," Rall said. "The comparison he had in mind: The guy who wrote the package wasn't Obama; it was a bunch of white economic advisers, and he [Delonas] wasn't thinking about Obama."

The Post cartoonist, he added, has the misfortune of working in a business that, over the past decade, has become a graveyard of gag jokes. A former editor once told Rall that satire in cartooning died after September 11.

"I have to wonder about the competence of his editors," Rall continued. "It goes with the 'make it shorter and dumber' mentality that's happening in print."

Cartoonist John Auchter, of the Grand Rapids Business Journal in Michigan, said Delonas had to expect people to be offended.

"The racial connotation of what he drew, it's really silly that either he or his editors couldn't anticipate that [reaction]," Auchter said. "When I think about all the things that are thrown around here with the accusations of being racist ... that is one of the things as a cartoonist you have to be aware of -- what you're doing and that you know things are going to be taken that way. You are the first-line editor."

Syndicated political cartoonist Chip Bok didn't find the Post cartoon racist, but he said it probably was in bad taste.

"A woman was terribly mauled and almost killed," he said. "That's really the only grounds by which [my editors] would throw out a cartoon. When it involves somebody's life like that, I would tend to stay away from it."

Bok knows a little about what it feels like to create a polarizing cartoon. In 2006, around the time of the Danish Mohammed cartoon controversy, the Akron Beacon Journal published a cartoon he drew showing a blurred picture of the Prophet Mohammed on CNN.

The cartoonist had been watching the network cover the story about Muslim anger over the Danish cartoons, which showed the prophet with a bomb crafted out of his turban. Bok was upset that CNN had chosen to blur the cartoon in its coverage.

The cartoonist immediately drew his cartoon, which showed a couple watching TV and saying, "Well, no wonder Muslims are upset. Muhammad looks like he's on acid."

"I was inundated with e-mail, the paper was picketed," he said. "There was quite a reaction."

Miley Cyrus' picture controversy

'Hannah Montana' actress Miley Cyrus is embroiled in a fresh controversy after photographs of her "slanting her eyes" surfaced on the internet.

Miley Cyrus is embroiled in new controversy after photographs of her "slanting her eyes" surfaced on the internet.

The 'Hannah Montana' actress - who shocked fans when a series of pictures of her in raunchy poses were leaked lat year - has been accused of being racist by an Asian American advocacy group, who are demanding she apologizes.

The Organization of Chinese American (OCA) said in a statement: "The photograph of Miley Cyrus and other individuals slanting their eyes currently circulating the internet is offensive to the Asian Pacific American community and sets a terrible example for her many young fans."

Executive Director of OCA George Wu said: "Not only has Miley Cyrus and the other individuals in the photograph encouraged and legitimized the taunting and mocking of people of Asian descent, she has also insulted her many Asian Pacific American fans. "The inclusion of an Asian Pacific American individual in the photo does not make it acceptable. OCA hopes that Miley Cyrus will apologize to her fans and the APA community for this lapse in judgment and takes the opportunity to better understand why the gesture is offensive."

Miley's representative is yet to comment on the allegations.

Meanwhile, the 16-year-old singer has traded in her Porsche - which used to belong to her mother - for an eco-friendly black Prius.

Miley decided to get rid of the luxury motor as it was "bad for the environment" and is delighted with her new model.

She said: "I didn't like it 'cause it was bad for the environment, and it was too big. My dad surprised me last night with a black Prius, which is good for the environment, and it's adorable! I'm going to get Hello Kitty floor mats!"

Self-mutilation on TV causes outrage

Parents’ group horrified by ‘Nip/Tuck’ self-mutilation scene

OK, I’ll give ‘em this one. In the past, when the Parents Television Council (or PTC) has objections to a show, I’ve shrugged off their moral outrage, like a few weeks ago when the group was horrified that NBC had accidentally showed a raised middle finger during an acceptance speech at the Golden Globes (oops!)

But the PTC may actually have a point this time around.

Nip/Tuck, which has seen its share of complaints from the PTC, recently aired a scene that featured a woman cutting off her own breast with an electric carving knife.

“Not content with depictions or descriptions of bestiality, incestuous necrophilia, or blood-soaked stabbings, the narcissistic sociopaths behind the production and distribution of Nip/Tuck have chosen to establish yet another low point in the history of television,” said PTC president Tim Winter in a press release.

“Tuesday’s episode [which aired this week on FX in the U.S.] portrayed sickening and bloody images of a woman who takes a mastectomy into her own hands in the crowded lobby of a doctor’s office.”

Daaamn.

OK, Even though I love the SAW movies, admittedly, the scene was revolting, I’m not going to lie about that. Usually the PTC objects to nudity, sex or language, so their fight against violence is a nice change.

The PTC plans to contact Nip/Tuck’s advertisers and ask “whether bloody self-mutilation with an electric carving knife is in alignment with the corporate image they wish to portray,” according to The Hollywood Reporter.

But I’m sure advertisers are already aware of the shocking, gory scenes of the show, so will it really make that much of a difference?

Film like ratings for websites?

Film ratings needed for websites: British minister

Britain's culture minister says that websites should be rated in the same way that films are, to protect children from offensive material.

Andy Burnham says his government has plans to discuss the idea of international rules for English-language websites with the administration of U.S. President-elect Barack Obama.

"We have got a real opportunity to make common cause [and] this is an area that is really now coming into full focus," Burnham told Britain's Daily Telegraph newspaper in an article published Saturday.

The minister, who called the internet a "dangerous place," said age-appropriate ratings may be the way to go.

He would also like to see internet-service providers (ISPs) offer parents "child-safe" web services where the only websites accessible are those stamped suitable for children.


Burnham also suggested the internet follow television's example, which often doesn't broadcast violent or sexually charged material prior to 9 p.m. There should also be a set time in which sites such as YouTube or Facebook would have to remove offensive or harmful content, he said.

Burnham has denied that he's attacking free speech.

"The internet has been empowering and democratizing in many ways but we haven't yet got the stakes in the ground to help people navigate their way safely around," Burnham said.

"There is a wider public interest at stake when it involves harm to other people. We have got to get better at defining where the public interest lies and being clear about it."

I really don't see how Mr. Burnham propose we do this? Almost all ideas seem great on paper, but when it comes to practically don't it, it just isn't possibly or do-able (think back to before the Wright brothers finally invented the plane, before that we had people strapping boards to there arms, take a running start, flapping there arms and jumping off cliffs...sure on paper that might sound like a good idea, I mean, the boards are like wings, and if birds, who have wings, can fly like that, why can't people?) How does Mr. Burnham propose we "shut off" internet website content prior to say 9pm so that children and minors are protected from things like that? I'm sure Mr. Burnham must have some sort of idea written out on how he thinks it can be done, I don't think he'd just propose it without a plan? or could he?..hmmm...

Isn't there already something in place for parents to protect there children (I may be wrong, correct me if I am) for offensive, inappropriate content and websites they do not approve of?
Off the top of my head I can name:

- CyberSitter
- NetNanny
- SafeEyes
- Cyber Patrol

And I do know that there are several other quality programs for parents, With these programs already in existance, do we really need to go with rating systems?

What do you guys think about this?