Got bad taste?

August 25, 2000

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals is back on the warpath, and this time it’s New York Pooh-bah Rudy Giuliani with a tomahawk in the noggin.

In keeping with the organization’s satire shtick, just this week PETA erected billboard knock-offs of the “Got Milk?” ad campaign at various locales in the state of Wisconsin. The road signs feature Giuliani, festooned with a frowny milk moustache and decked with the caption:

“Got prostate cancer?”

With New Yorkers understandably standoffish about the ads, PETA plan-B’d to the dairy mecca of Wisconsin to sport Giuliani’s puss.

“Lotsa mothers give their kids lotsa milk,” says

one version of the ad. “Now, some of their sons have prostates the size of the Empire State Building.” From there, the ad briefly mentions how chugging milk can increase a guy’s risk of cancer, adding, “Hmmm, maybe that explains why Hillary Clinton’s campaign headquarters kept sending over those free ice cream sandwiches.”

Ouch.

Predictably, Giuliani spokeswoman Lynn Rasic characterized the ads as “tasteless and insensitive.”

Everybody knows about Giuliani’s cancer. He ostensibly dropped out of the New York Senate race over the condition. From a PR standpoint, considering the high-profile nature of the man and his disease, PETA made a great choice grabbing Giuliani’s mug. Great way to drive home a point. But is it a good way?

Admittedly, I’m one of the last to criticize. My columns are often snide, a bit rude and punch gleefully below the belt. So what? It’s satire. Everything’s excusable for the sake of a joke or a good jab, right — especially satire. After all, satire is noble; it’s driven by a passion for truth. “Satire’s ostensible purpose,” writes Terry Lindvall in a book about C.S. Lewis’ humor, “is … to function as a social corrective, a comic form that cuts through pride, prejudice, and errors like a knife through butter. It does not aim at laughter as much as it does at exposing fraud and folly.”

For PETA — whether wrong or right — the fraud and folly is the milk industry. “When it comes to preventing prostate cancer,” says the organization, “the science is clear: Men who steer clear of milk have significantly lower rates of the deadly disease.”

But is any jab OK to make your point?

Satire, notes Lindvall, “is supposed to cauterize wounds without killing the patient. …”

Obviously, while his cancer might, a joke won’t kill the mayor. “Sticks an stones …” my grandfather would say. Get over it.

But still, real harm or not, something about this stinks.

Cancer is worse than hard to get through, as is (I know, my mother is currently in remission from leukemia) without having your face plastered all over the road as a poster boy for somebody’s pet cause. Waging a war against a product by personalizing the fight to a man whose condition may not have even been brought on by the product is … tacky.

“It’s tasteless and inappropriate to exploit my illness and also takes advantage of my position as the mayor for advertising purposes,” said Giuliani. “The message they’re trying to deliver just makes sense in their own zealous, out-of-control thinking.”

Granted, sometimes satire has to play rough. “People should be taught what is, not what should be,” Lenny Bruce once said. “All my humor is based on destruction and despair. If the whole world were tranquil, without disease and violence, I’d be standing in the breadline — right back of J. Edgar Hoover.”

Satire is, of course, subjective, and so is the offense it causes, but there’s definitely a line between being rough and mean. PETA, I think it is safe to say, crossed it.