Monday, February 25, 2008

Spanish newspaper invites us to play a game of 'What's wrong with this 9/11 picture?'


(click ad to read copy)
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah—it's another 9/11 ad!
Do you know that the TransAmerica building is not in New York City, and that the second WTC attack plane was most certainly not a Hercules military transport plane? Smartie! You must read El Pais (The Country), Spain's largest daily paper. At least that's what this double-page ad from the tabloid is implying. In its defense, the ad is of course talking to Spaniards—who I'm sure don't have every detail of that day forever burned into their brains like I do. (On the other hand, they could tell me all the macabre details of the March 11, 2004 Madrid subway bombings.) Buuut, does turning the WTC terrorist attack into a kid's game you might find on the back of a dive diner's paper placemat make the newspaper look smart? previously in WTC ads: the closest some of us will ever get to heaven; WTC asbestos ad; hey, isn't that plane flying a little low?; two pre-9/11 foreboding ads with WTC visuals; even more fun, foreboding WTC imagery. (image via. thanks to David Hall for the heads up.)

7 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

I don't know about you, but I learned a lot from that ad, especially that there's "something worst than not being informed."

8:08 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

There are worst (sic) things than their spelling.

8:19 AM  
Blogger copyranter said...

In the proofreader's defense, I'm pretty sure this is a translated version of the ad just for publicity purposes; it probably didn't run that way.

8:40 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

El País is most certainly not a tabloid.

6:46 PM  
Blogger copyranter said...

It is a tabloid (size) paper, according to Wikipedia, so the usage is correct——just like the New York Times is called a "broadsheet."

8:17 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hi, Spanish reader here.

I don't remember that ad anywhere (and, frankly, the English text makes it a bit suspect), but El País did come under a lot of criticism about this ad for their subscription service in September 2004. More information here. The text translates as "A lot can happen in one day. Imagine what can happen in three months".

3:47 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

cp..cp..cp..
orang yang sangat aneh..ya..

4:13 PM  

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