Shouldn’t it be “Flavor Aid?”
Just in the interest of historical accuracy?
A northern Indiana restaurant that erected billboards referring to the 1978 Jonestown cult massacre in which more than 900 people died has removed the signs following complaints that the signs were offensive.
… “Our role is not to be controversial or even edgy. We want to be noticed — and there’s a difference,” Leslie told the South Bend Tribune. “We have a responsibility to (advertise) with care, and that’s why we’re pulling this ad. We made a mistake and don’t want to have a negative image in the community.”
… “I thought perhaps I had misread the sign,” (Patricia Barbera-Brown of South Bend) recalls. “It brought back quite a few horrible images and memories, and the very notion that a local restaurant would trivialize such a worldwide tragedy to simply increase their sales of cocktails is outrageous to me, and it offended me to the core.”
Here’s the sign:
Hm.
The Jonestown cult massacre occurred in Guyana – in Africa South America – 33 years ago. The cult itself started out in Indianapolis (at least, according to Wikipedia). At forty-one years of age, I have neither memory of nor emotional reaction to such references. In fact, I’d never have attached the name “Jonestown cult” to the poisoned-Kool-Aid (which was actually Flavor Aid) mass suicide except that the story clued me in.
I’d heard of both. They just don’t take root in my psyche. So: wow. Three decades later, it’s still “bringing back” “horrible images and memories?”
But maybe it’s more of a sore spot in Indianapolis, or maybe the woman quoted knew somebody involved.
On a slightly different subject, the phrase “drinking the Kool-Aid” has become a fairly common metaphor for willingly going along with something that any sensible person can see is completely insane. Bloggers use it with some frequency. Political analysts. Liberals, too, except they don’t use it right (the activity or belief has to be crazy, not logical).
Are we all being horribly insensitive?
UPDATE - Guyana is in South America, not Africa as I originally wrote. Danged impolite of those Guyanians, not being on the continent I put them on. Thanks to Agnes for pointing out my mistake.
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Trog, Guyans is on the northeast coast of South AMerica, near Venezuela
Trog – Some perspective from an old guy. The news of Jonestown broke while I watching SNL. It really had the feel of a skit when the special report was aired.
Emotional attachment? Bleh, my friends held a Jonestown party several weeks later, complete with powdered drink mix (probably Kool-Aid) combined with Everclear. At least those poor souls in Guyana didn’t have to awake with their heads pounding the next day.
Certainly, Jonestown is more of a “sore spot” for anyone who “saw” it happen. Thus will Tiananmen Square, or the protests in Libya, mean much less to those too young to have watched those stories unfold.
However, you don’t have to have had a personal connection, or even emotional attachment, to the Jonestown massacre to be offended by the trivializing of any such horrifying and tragic loss. So, yes, it is insensitive to exploit those, as any, deaths for commercial marketing.
Looks like a pretty good gamble, though, as the people more likely to be bothered by the ad probably don’t constitute a big overlap with the target audience. So the ad is most likely fine with the younger portion of the restaurant-and-bar market, and the response to the insensitivity of it got the ad, and the restaurant, a good bit of publicity. (Rather brings Groupon Does Tibet to mind. Is this just a new approach to marketing? Offend, apologize, get free press?)
ON THE other hand, the use of the term “drinking the Kool-Aid” is not an insensitive trivializing of a tragedy; it is an ominous allusion to a tragic situation that resulted from an ostensibly comparable collective mindset. It is a perfect term.
I think ‘drinking kool aid’ refers to a popular drink in the 60s involving LSD.