March 3rd, 2008

Poverty. Global warming. Darfuri genocide. There's no shortage of things that need changing, but if you had to pick just one thing to focus on – the one area where you could do the most good for the most people – what would it be?

If you're Michael and Sheri Sucec, the answer is clearly "policing convenience store billboards for Dr. Evil catchphrases."

I know what you're thinking: "Jeepers, Graham! How about a NSFW warning before you flash that filth on my screen?!? My boss is going to think I'm surfing hardcore porn on company time."

Sorry. My bad.

"Our advertising team always looks for ways to cut through the vast clutter of messaging that the average consumer encounters every day," Sheetz wrote. "Sometimes we will do this by using twists on commonly used words or phrases to inject humor." That humor doesn't sit well with Sherri Sucec, who answers the phone by saying "Hallelujah," or Michael Sucec. The couple often preach on street corners in Harrisburg and on interstate overpasses... "If we have any sanity left in the United States of America, this is totally unacceptable," Michael Sucec told the Derry Twp. supervisors Tuesday night, speaking with the Bible on his podium.
    (from pennlive.com)

A street preacher wants to voice his opinion? That is news. No wonder it's been covered by everybody from FoxNews to Eyewitness News (whose headline, "Sandwich billboard upsets neighbourhood," suggests an entire community up in arms vs. a solitary evangelical couple). In fact, a Google search reveals nine thousand, six hundred and fifty articles on the Frickin' Chicken fiasco, some of which reference the Sucecs only as "critics," which implies legitimacy, or as a "local family," which sounds infinitely more empathetic than "excitable street preachers".

What absolutely none of those articles seem to mention is that the complainants are the same Michael and Sheri Sucec who protested the opening of the National Civil War Museum with a banner reading "Proof America Condones Sodomy". This was during a ceremony to honour the war dead, incidentally. So, you know, clearly a credible source.

Let's review, shall we? A single, meritless complaint by deranged fanatics yields international press and an apology from the advertiser. For using the word "frickin".

Now that's obscene.

-Graham

P.S. It threw me at first, but I kind of like the way the comic just fades into white, as though it were resting on a cloud. This must be what billboards look like in Heaven. "So that's why I didn't find Mom among the ranks of the Seraphim. Thanks for keeping me in the loop, God!"

P.P.S. Apropos of nothing, holy crap:

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