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February 4, 2006
Airline Magazine, Children's Game Publish Anti-Gay Slur - Accidentally, I Hope
Late Thursday night Susanne and I flew down to Florida visit my parents for the weekend. On the Atlanta-Melbourne leg of our 11:30pm flight, operated by Delta Airlines, I was perusing the carrier's official magazine, Delta Sky (mostly because I was too exhausted to handle the lofty prose of my latest Aubrey-Maturin book). The magazine usually contains short, light pieces for frequent travelers that are accessible to a general audience.
Flipping through the pages I eventually reached the section known as Style+Value, which features blurbs and pictures of trendy places and hot shopping buys. One blurb, titled "Card Carrying," contained what should have been an innocuous description of "NamIts," a game you can play with your kids on long drives:
Name things that fly—or swim, or run. . . . For some reason, calling out lists within specific categories has universal appeal, as Barbara Jerome discovered. This mother and mother of invention strung together flashcards asking kids to name various items, and voilà: NamIts was born. Each deck (Regular, Travel and Junior editions) sells for $9.95. Info: www.namits.com.
I then glanced at the picture of NamIts, which is basically a collection of cards on a plastic ring. At first glance, it looks like a typical kids game. The card on the left shows a cat and highlights the words "CAR PET" while the card on the right has a pizza and the word "MUNCHER."
At first I didn't think much of it and turned the page. But something didn't seem right, so I flipped back to it and saw to my horror that the picture's words, when read collectively, appeard as "CARPET MUNCHER."
Perhaps this phrase isn't in everyone's vocabulary, but I associate it with a derogatory slur against lesbians and a misogynist insult against women in general. Was it merely a localized Florida insult I'd heard while growing up - and thus an innocent, unfortunate coincidence - or was this a more universally recognized slur, at least in American culture? I handed the magazine to Susanne, who grew up in the midwest, just to see if the phrase meant anything to her.
"Notice anything wrong with this story?" I asked.
"No, not really - OH MY GOD!" she replied. "I can't believe they published that!"
Me neither. Part of me knows I should be offended but I can't stop laughing, either.
How could this slip through the editorial process? What on earth was Delta Sky thinking? And perhaps more troubling, how is it possible that a children's game could get away with this? It's one thing if the game's cards were randomly shuffled into this order by the photographer, but the cards are strung together on a ring, suggesting that the game always has these two cards next to each other. Perhaps the cards are ordered randomly in the assembly process. Perhaps not. I also don't know if the photo in question was taken by the magazine or supplied by the game company. I checked the game's website and saw no sign of the photo, but at the moment it's still on the Delta Sky website.
I can only imagine the emails Delta is gonna get about this. Too funny.... -andy
UPDATE: Feb 10, 2006, 11:15am
I just got some new comments on the blog posted by John Kuczala, who says he was the one who took the photo in question. Here's what he wrote:
I'm the photographer that took that picture. It was totally accidental that those cards ended up together. The sole reason for choosing those cards was one was the last orange card and one was the first blue card. It's unfortunate that I didn't pay more attention to reading the cards and that no one at Sky Magazine caught the combination, but it was not supposed to be a joke or an insult.
Thanks for clarifying things, John - I appreciate you taking the time posting your perspective and shedding light on the situation. -andy,
Posted by acarvin at February 4, 2006 11:07 AM
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