It’s shameful. An ad by the World Wildlife Fund that tries to turn 9/11 into…something that has to do with animals — and not the animals who flew those planes into the World Trade Center. The text on the ad reads, “The tsunami killed 100 times more people than 9/11. The planet is brutally powerful. Respect it. Preserve it.” So not only do they make a mockery of 9/11, but they make a mockery of those who died in the tsunami — as if the victims of that natural disaster had not showed sufficient respect for Mother Earth and were drowned as punishment. If we don’t “respect” the earth, we may end up with the occasional river catching fire, I’ve yet to hear anything about a scientific consensus proving that my V8 is causing tsunamis. Update: The WWF is apparently outraged at the ad, never approved it, and never authorized it according to flacks for the group who have been deployed en masse to beat back the story. I guess I’m confused as to how an ad can win an award while the client is completely in the dark, but the WWF has managed even to disappear the award page that Ad Week had initially pointed to as the source of the photo. So, the WWF says it had nothing to do with the ad, the New York Daily News carries water for the group without asking any tough questions, and a flack for the WWF personally calls the offices of THE WEEKLY STANDARD to set the record straight. It’s amazing to me that a major non-profit with such an aggressive public relations department could, at the same time, have an ad department that is completely out to lunch. I don’t buy it. Update II: The WWF called again, and this time I actually spoke with the flack in question. She insists that the WWF had no knowledge of this ad, had never authorized it, and had not learned of its existence until yesterday. I have no real reason to doubt that other than the fact that the ruthless efficiency of their pushback on this story seems so discordant with their claim of total ignorance of the ad until yesterday — despite it winning an award. The WWF rep offered a plausible explanation for this — the ad was attributed to the World Wildlife Foundation rather than the World Wildlife Fund. Okay, I’m still dubious, but in the absence of any evidence and having been offered a plausible explanation by WWF, I suppose I’ve got no choice but to accept their theory of the crime.
