The Daily Herald reports that a provocative new ad will soon hit the New York subway lines in response to widespread violence hitting the Middle East in the wake of the film mocking the prophet Muhammad – a new “Anti-Jihad” ad penned by Atlas Shrugs’ conservative blogger and executive director of the American Freedom Defense Initiative Pamela Geller.
Citing the fact that anti-Israel ads have been posted in the subways before, Geller took her fight to post her own version of her anti-Jihad ads to US courts and won the battle to have them posted despite New York advertising companies refusing to have them put up initially due to the damage they feel they may bring. As a result of the court ruling that refusing to post the ads is “unconstitutional” and an infringement to freedom of speech the ads are set to run across New York’s public transportation lines next week.
To get a better feel for just what these ads are like (the anti-Jihad ad verses the anti-Israel ad), let’s take a look at them together. First, Geller’s anti-Jihad ad:
And now the anti-Israel ad:
Now, I COULD be wrong when it comes down to it, but looking closely at these ads it seems like one of them might have a slightly more negative connotation to it. It could be the black, white and red lettering alone making it seem like a hate ad that could potentially cause more people to develop anti-Islamic prejudices, however according to the Supreme Court this is alright so long as nobody is actually directly hurt in the process – Geller could even openly burn a cross on someone’s lawn and still walk away fine according to the Supreme Court’s ruling in R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul.
Now let’s ignore the logical error of the ad for a moment (“Jihad” is a holy war, in which case you cannot defeat it. Therefore the implication is to defeat those who are supporting it – i.e. this is an anti-Islamic ad). The bigger question is: what doors does this open up for other similar types of ads to be placed in public subways that could potentially cause even more public unrest? With the elections just around the corner and everyone getting all riled up we could possibly be in line for things like:
Nothing beats bringing people closer together than openly hating one another! Or we could go more generic:
Of course, my favorite one of all I could think of would simply be:
Yep, that about sums it up.