Monday, November 26, 2007

A Little Wife-Killing Humor for Your Holiday Cheer


Can you believe it? This is an actual billboard -- now on display in Lockport, New York -- from the misogyny-flaunting American Concrete company [(716) 433-7915].

Cause wife killing is just so ha-ha funny.

We're guessing that American Concrete owner Kevin McCabe somehow missed the warnings from October's Domestic Violence Awareness Month.

Lockport Union-Sun & Journal:

A business owner is standing his ground, and the women in his family are standing with him, after a YWCA of Niagara official charged his company’s advertising is gender insensitive.

Richfield Street-based American Concrete had a new billboard erected Monday on West Avenue. Over the image of a wrapped gift, the solicitous catchline, “Wife need new shoes?” is accompanied by the American Concrete logo and a greeting, “Happy Holidays.”

The humorous inference to “cement shoes” or “concrete shoes” as a method of doing away with one’s wife is at the heart of the controversy. What company owner Kevin McCabe sees as risqué spoof, YWCA Executive Director Kathleen Granchelli condemned as ignorant.

“I’m sure it was considered to be a joke, or something cute, but with the number of fatalities we see in the domestic violence field, it’s not a joke,” Granchelli said Thursday. “It’s in very poor taste.”

No, it’s not, countered McCabe. “I think the mainstream understands it,” he said. “It’s unfortunate that some people are reading much more into it than they should.”

Via Feministing where Ann observes: "Nothing like a little eggnog, a roaring fire, and some wife-killing jokes to make the season bright."