Do you agree that the website joke is offensive?
Some veterans and law enforcement officials are angry about a movie website promoting the new comedy Wedding Crashers that jokingly encourages visitors to wear a fake Purple Heart medal, the Associated Press reports. Purple Hearts are given to soldiers wounded in combat. In the movie, one ploy actors Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson use to hit on women is to pretend to be Purple Heart recipients. New Line Cinema's website includes a fake, paper Purple Heart to cut out, with the line, "Carrying a Purple Heart in your jacket guarantees you attention, admiration and plenty of free booze." Not everyone thinks it's funny. Thomas Cottone, Jr., a special agent with the FBI who enforces a federal law that bans wearing, manufacturing, buying, selling or trading a Medal of Honor, told AP, "I challenge the producer of that movie to go to Walter Reed Hospital and walk through the ward and see if he still wants to print out a fake Purple Heart. Talk to some of these people who don't have legs anymore and see how funny they think that movie is."
Are the veterans and law enforcement officials being too sensitive?
Are you surprised that the moviemakers weren't more sensitive to this during wartime?
posted by Pat Campbell @ 10:53 AM
2 comments
2 Comments:
I think humour is something that should be directed at things that don't necessarily stand up to scrutiny. Religion & politics are fine targets for that.
If you have a valid criticism of the Purple Heart award, then let's hear it and by all means make jokes about it. If not, then it is just offensive.
Do you all get that the joke here is not directed at the Purple Heart or recipients of the Purple Heart? The joke here is that the characters in this film are so pathetic and low that they would lower themselves to using such a revered and honored symbol just to get a free drink. The "joke" wouldn't be "funny" if the Purple Heart wasn't so "sacred".
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