How many of you have felt personally victimized by Party City? The party-supply store this week issued an apology and pulled one of its ads that offended people who don’t eat gluten, People.com reports.
The ad promoted Food Network host Sunny Anderson’s inflatable snack stadium, an actual product. Here is the commercial’s unbearably cruel setup:
Two women stand near a table of Super Bowl snacks, while a lone plate sits off to the side.
Woman one: “Those are some gluten-free options,” one woman says in the commercial.
Woman two: “Do we even know people that are like that?”
Woman one: “Tina.”
Woman two: “Oh, gross, yeah.”
We’d show you the whole clip, but it’s been taken down from YouTube. Meanwhile, our President is out here calling entire countries of people shitholes—no apology necessary. Brands should of course come clean when they do something actually offensive and moronic, but check out Party City’s strivingly earnest mea culpa:
The controversy embroiled even Sunny Anderson, who did not appear in the ad and “was not involved in in the creation of this commercial in any way.” She nonetheless felt compelled to thank the store for handling the fallout “swiftly and with care.”
Of course food allergies are serious. Of course it’s wrong to mock people who have medical conditions. But is that what the ad did?
It seems the commercial gently pokes fun at those who choose to avoid gluten for non-Celiac reasons, a sort of eye-roll to the insufferable nature of complicated diets. Burger King recently debuted an ad that makes light of Death Row inmates—a literal life and death situation—and there’s no public backlash. In fact, the press finds it “edgy.”
Everyone: Just buy a canister of helium, take a deep intake and relax, man.