Bombing Them Back to the Smurf Age

From the Telegraph by way of Reason:

It seems that Unicef has begun a new antiwar campaign, emphasizing the impact on children.

Philippe Henon, a spokesman for Unicef Belgium, said his agency had set out to shock, after concluding that traditional images of suffering in Third World war zones had lost their power to move television viewers. "It's controversial," he said. "We have never done something like this before but we've learned over the years that the reaction to the more normal type of campaign is very limited."

I find it kind of disturbing that people would be more bothered by a crying Baby Smurf and a devastated Smurf Village than by, you know, actual death. The ad campaign could have been even more gruesome:

Julie Lamoureux, account director at Publicis for the campaign, said the agency's original plans were toned down.
"We wanted something that was real war - Smurfs losing arms, or a Smurf losing a head -but they said no."

And the very first comment over at Hit and Run is this, which reminds one of a Fox News pundit at the least:

"If you are going to to there, you need to show the whole story. We need to see "Beloved Papa" and his roving death squads, disfigurment of Smurfette when she gets out of line, and mysterious happenings in Handy's garage. It could be nothing, but there is an awful lot of unaccounted for fungicide ..."

Check out the Hit and Run bit here. Original article here.
(Crossposted by Bostondreamer at FloridaBlues)