Ind. Restaurant Pulls Billboards with Cult References - And People Consider the "joke" Funny

Alpha Echo

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Ind. Restaurant Pulls Billboards with Cult References - And People Consider the "joke" Funny

So, this isn't really huge news at all. I admit it was more the comments to the article that fired me up.

Hacienda, a restaurant in northern Indiana, placed some very inappropriate billboards along the side of the road.

The billboards included the statement, "We're like a cult with better Kool-Aid," over a glass containing a mixed drink, as well as the phrase "To die for!"

After a woman complained, the vice president of sales and marketing at Hacienda apologized, admitted the billboards were a mistake, and ordered the signs removed.

I don't think the woman who complained was overreacting, and I also don't think sales and marketing was thinking very clearly when they came up with that sign. It was pretty ignorant and of pure humor. I'd have been offended too.

But the comments are what really pissed me off! The woman isn't suing, and the company didn't give her a hard time. They took the signs down, apologized, end of story.

But some of the comments are nasty, laughing over the sign and swearing at the woman who voiced her complaint.

I know we all say "don't drink the Kool-Aid" or something similar. But I don't think, when someone says that, they're making a joke out of something so tragic.

Am I the one being oversensitive here? Or are these people heartless and born a generation too late to care about the innocent lives that were destroyed - and the ruined lives of family members left behind?
 

Sarpedon

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Do you find Monty Python's joke about the Spanish Inquisition funny? How long ago does the tragedy have to happen before we are allowed to laugh?
 

veinglory

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A little further off than that. Like after no one directly involved is alive--that's what is traditional. (e.g. the writer of the screenplay for the King's Speech waited, at her request, until the Queen mother was deceased).
 

Cranky

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A little further off than that. Like after no one directly involved is alive--that's what is traditional. (e.g. the writer of the screenplay for the King's Speech waited, at her request, until the Queen mother was deceased).

Seems like a reasonable benchmark to me.
 

Alpha Echo

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A little further off than that. Like after no one directly involved is alive--that's what is traditional. (e.g. the writer of the screenplay for the King's Speech waited, at her request, until the Queen mother was deceased).

That was going to be my answer. Thanks. :)

I'm not angry about this because the restaurant took down the billboards and realized their ads had been a mistake.

What angers me is the strong and hostile reaction of people to just "get over it."

1978 is not that long ago. My husband was 4, and I would be born in 3 years.

And for the record, I cannot imagine a time I'd ever comfortably be able to make fun of 9/11.

I don't make fun of things that happened at Vietnam or the World Wars, and all were before my time.
 

Sarpedon

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Hmm, does that mean that you don't find the jokes funny until the people have passed away, or do you just repress your mirth? That's kind of funny, the last survivor dies, and people around the world just break out laughing.

Humor is a natural defense mechanism against fear and the un-understandable. How a person could lead other people to destroy themselves in such numbers is both incomprehensible and terrifying. You shouldn't be surprised that people laugh at it.
The horrors of war are much easier to comprehend, being normal.
 

Cranky

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Personally, I don't find it surprising. What I do find surprising is this insistence that if one finds it funny, then other people should, too. Or at least, "lighten up" about it. Which is what Alpha was really talking about I think...seeing that sentiment in the comments trail.
 

Alpha Echo

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Yes, exactly. I don't understand thinking it funny - and trust me, I have a good sense of humor! I find a great deal funny! But just as others are entitled to find this billboard funny, so also are others entitled to find it offensive. Especially those who were personally impacted by the ordeal in 1978.
 

icerose

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Cranky's statement reminds me of my Jewish friend. He's the son of a rabbi and his grandfather carries a tattoo from a concentration camp he was locked up in as a kid. He makes some really awful jokes about that era and about Jews and their ordeals in general. For them it's a coping mechanism to come to grips with the horrors that happened, but at the same time they don't expect everyone to appreciate them or find them funny. He explained it once to me in terms of "If you can't laugh at the worst thing that's happened to you, they've won." I can accept and even appreciate that.

It's the people who cannot accept that not everyone is going to view a "joke" funny or even in good humor and then try to either force your opinion or discount you for not "getting" it.
 

Alpha Echo

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Cranky's statement reminds me of my Jewish friend. He's the son of a rabbi and his grandfather carries a tattoo from a concentration camp he was locked up in as a kid. He makes some really awful jokes about that era and about Jews and their ordeals in general. For them it's a coping mechanism to come to grips with the horrors that happened, but at the same time they don't expect everyone to appreciate them or find them funny. He explained it once to me in terms of "If you can't laugh at the worst thing that's happened to you, they've won." I can accept and even appreciate that.

It's the people who cannot accept that not everyone is going to view a "joke" funny or even in good humor and then try to either force your opinion or discount you for not "getting" it.

I can accept that too, of course. It's probably similar to the way cops (in the movies and in books, anyway) and detectives make some crude jokes a crime scene.

I can't imagine doing that either, but I imagine if I saw that stuff every day, I'd need to break up the tension somehow. But I also wouldn't do that with someone who didn't do what I did and see what I saw. Like your friend.
 

Sarah Madara

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The jokes I find funny and the jokes I consider appropriate are totally different.

There's not much that can't end up a target for jokes between my husband and me in our own home. We're just the kind of people who appreciate black comedy and gallows humor.

The Kool-Aid joke wouldn't bother me in the slightest if I heard someone tell the joke. It's just different as a billboard, where people usually expect stricter standards of decency.
 

Alpha Echo

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The jokes I find funny and the jokes I consider appropriate are totally different.

There's not much that can't end up a target for jokes between my husband and me in our own home. We're just the kind of people who appreciate black comedy and gallows humor.

The Kool-Aid joke wouldn't bother me in the slightest if I heard someone tell the joke. It's just different as a billboard, where people usually expect stricter standards of decency.

Funny you say that because, while I read the article, I imagined my husband making that same sort of comment. In private. At home. And I would have laughed.

But making it public bothered me.

I'm messed up.
 
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Yes, exactly. I don't understand thinking it funny - and trust me, I have a good sense of humor! I find a great deal funny! But just as others are entitled to find this billboard funny, so also are others entitled to find it offensive. Especially those who were personally impacted by the ordeal in 1978.
Such people would also have the right to laugh at it, if they so choose.
 

Torrance

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It's just different as a billboard, where people usually expect stricter standards of decency.

Decency is a tricky term here. There is nothing "indecent" about this billboard. Whether or not it is appropriate, is the question.

As an aside, if all of you who are unhappy with this billboard could see fit to tweet about it, blog about it, etc. the management of the restaurant and the advertising agency would appreciate it. :D
 

tjwriter

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Hmmm, I don't recall seeing any of them here. Hacienda has restaurants all through Indiana. There are three of them in the city I work in and I see their billboards all the time. They are usually pretty funny.

I think someone missed the mark here, probably not trying to offend, but not realizing that there are standards of decency between private jokes and public images. Wouldn't surprise if this was the brain child of a young ad agency worker.
 

Vince524

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I think a few people hit the nail on the head above. It's the kind of humor that can seem tasteless, therefore not really good for a billboard.
 

darkprincealain

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I find the billboard offensive. And since it's a common misconception this happened again in 1997 (where they used pudding and applesauce instead of Kool-Aid), I think it's a gross misreading of the appropriateness for advertising in a public space. Or else, just thoughtless.
 

Celia Cyanide

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Do you find Monty Python's joke about the Spanish Inquisition funny? How long ago does the tragedy have to happen before we are allowed to laugh?

I can handle some very offensive humor, but using such humor for advertising is not very smart. Advertising is supposed to make you react favorably toward what they are selling. It's not that it can't be fun. It's just not smart.
 

AncientEagle

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I've had a church pastor make a funny, off-color comment to me in private and we both laughed. He would never have thought of making such a comment from the pulpit, and if he had, I would not have come close to laughing. As several have said above, there's a time and a place. A joke about Jonestown seems, on a billboard, to be thoroughly out of place. And this few decades after the event seems thoroughly the wrong time, IMHO.

I have a Jewish acquaintance, military, who spent time in a German concentration camp as a youngster. Being a man with a persistent and near-constantly exercised sense of humor, he startled a group one day when he entered a headquarters office, gave the Nazi salute, and shouted, "Heil Hitler." Some were stunned, but he just smiled and said, "I have the right." Scarletpeaches' comment above reminded me of that incident. He did indeed have the right. I don't.

A lot of things I found funny in my youth I now realize were really just shocking, not all that humorous. Today I don't find them funny at all.
 

AncientEagle

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Do you find Monty Python's joke about the Spanish Inquisition funny? How long ago does the tragedy have to happen before we are allowed to laugh?

It isn't a question of being allowed. Nobody's preventing anyone from laughing. But those laughing should be aware that others may think them crude, insensitive, warped, cruel, etc., characteristics they might rather not have attributed to themselves.
 

Manuel Royal

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You've got a right to offend people, of course, but I'm surprised they thought that would be a good advertisement. (And I'm surprised the Kool-Aid people didn't sue them. For one thing, it was actually Flavor Aid at Jonestown, not Kool-Aid.)

Not much of a joke, in any case, and it doesn't even make sense. How is the restaurant like a cult? If it were like a cult, I wouldn't want to eat there. Just a lame, pseudo-clever, self-conscious attempt at being "edgy".
 

Alpha Echo

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Yes. It was funny.

Again, there's a time and place for this stuff. Broadcasting it to everyone driving or walking or riding their bikes past the sign is not the place to make the joke.

You wanna laugh about it privately with your friends or whatever, fine.

But, IMO, this was inappropriate and not something at which we have the right to laugh (as others have mentioned as well).
 

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Again, there's a time and place for this stuff. Broadcasting it to everyone driving or walking or riding their bikes past the sign is not the place to make the joke.

You wanna laugh about it privately with your friends or whatever, fine.

But, IMO, this was inappropriate and not something at which we have the right to laugh (as others have mentioned as well).


People are offended by beer ads, or by birth control ads, or by ads that portray women poorly, or {insert ad here}.

In your opinion it wasn't funny. Okay. In my opinion it was and it probably would have made me remember that restaurant.