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Friday, February 27, 2009
Brent Bozell :: Townhall.com Columnist
A Commercial For Adultery?
by Brent Bozell
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Everyone who enjoys NFL football games knows they're going to be sitting through an avalanche of those awkward ads for erectile-dysfunction drugs, and ads soaked in sex and violence selling new movies or prime-time TV shows. Despite this barrage, the NFL has managed to show some standards, believe it or not.

They refused a Super Bowl commercial from the website AshleyMadison.com because of its unusual product, a dating service for married people who want to commit adultery -- or as they strangely describe it, they enable "married dating." Their slogan is "Life's short. Have an affair."

But this Home Wreckers Incorporated found a way around the NFL, such as airing local ads during the Super Bowl on NBC-affiliated KPRC in Houston. CEO Noel Biderman boasted in a press release that he ran his new female-targeted commercial because "In Texas, men love their football, and women love to cheat!" He also claimed Texas is his company's fastest growing market with over 200,000 members signed up in the last two years.

The commercial is blunt. A husband is cartoonishly ignoring and mistreating his wife at a restaurant on their anniversary. A female announcer says: "Have you ever found yourself on a really bad blind date? Now imagine that date lasting the rest of your life. Isn't it time for AshleyMadison.com?"

Despite the ad's message, this is not really an enterprise for unhappy wives. As a female San Francisco sex columnist reported as she tried out the website, Biderman "had told me when I interviewed him that a woman didn't even need a photo or any personal info in her profile to get 20 potential affair buddies arriving on her digital doorstep. I guess I should have believed him. Within minutes of logging in, I had a stream of instant messages from men in the Bay Area."

Ashley Madison's entire business model is shameless denial. Check out the Frequently Asked Questions page on their website. When they ask themselves if they encourage infidelity, they brazenly lie: "No, Ashley Madison does not encourage anyone to stray ... Providing a service like ours does not make someone more likely to stray any more than increasing the availability of glassware contributes to alcoholism."

This answer begins about an inch below their omnipresent slogan "Life's short, have an affair." Continued...
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About The Author
Founder and President of the Media Research Center, Brent Bozell runs the largest media watchdog organization in America.
 
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Reply # 1
Date: Mar 1, 2009 - 12:05 AM EST
A party to the divorce
Churches have been held responsible for allowing cheaters to become intimate within church groups. They're called as parties in the divorce. A friend of mine who is a youth pastor was once assessed a $1000 because two of his volunteers cheated with one another (supposedly without his knowledge) and the judge in the divorce case felt that he should have worked harder to keep them apart and/or told the absent spouses about this. That was in Georgia, but I'm told by local pastors that it could happen here.

So, yeah, this company could be party to the divorces they encourage. I'm sure their argument would be that they aren't actually advocating divorce or even adultery, just variety of acquaintance. It's not their fault that the people who uses their services make stupid decisions.

Of course, that's the argument the bars in my community used to make for allowing drunks to leave their premises and drive. When somebody was permanent brain damaged by an encounter with one bar's drunk customer, the resulting law suit convinced local bars that they really do have a responsibility for the actions of their customers.
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Reply # 2
Date: Feb 28, 2009 - 1:14 PM EST
army wife
just like old newt gingrich did when he served his wife with divorce papers while she was in the hospital receiving cancer treatments.
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