KMart pulls "Merry Ham-mas" gift bag

[pesco]

Originally published at: KMart pulls "Merry Ham-mas" gift bag | Boing Boing

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[fuzzyfungus]

Man, I was just about to take advantage of the ISIS mobile commerce app, in partnership with all major payment card industry players, to buy one.

[anon48584343]

[Serge]

Let me thing about this. A group who doesn’t celebrate Christmas is complaining how a secular business promotes an a Christmas related product.

[MekkaB]

At first, I was exactly on your wave length.

Then I looked again: “Ham-Mas.” Let’s remove that hyphen: “Hammas.”

[DenverLett]

I didn’t realize Kmart was even around anymore.

[euansmith]

Oh, boy; I was looking at it from the Trefah/Haram angle. Yikes , and double yikes .

[MadLibrarian]

Surprisingly, Woolworth is still a major player in Australia too.

[allium]

I missed that too - and that’s why you have sensitivity marketers.

[Serge]

I get that but i doubt rhar wa the intent. To me (a moderate) it seems to be over anxious looking for a fault. Let’s face I t there are asshiles on both sides.

[Mister44]

It wasn’t their intent, and that was acknowledged by the organization in the article:

The Australian Jewish Association said it had “politely suggested” it be removed from sale because of the unintentional likeness to Hamas

For a country that wanted to start naming things “Freedom Fries” after 9/11, I don’t think we have a lot of room to talk about being “over(ly) anxious”.

And like above with the show Archer and the agency they worked for being named ISIS, it was a bad look once the terrorist organization started making front page news.

[bru]

It is Woolworths, a different thing all together.

[smulder]

@Serge

i doubt rhar wa the intent

… allegedly in A.D. 435 Pope Sixtus III decreed that Christians should eat pork on Christmas as a sort of loyalty test

Today’s “intent” is not necessarily relevant

[oldstevo]

I like the fact that it was a real apology.
“We got it wrong on this occasion, and we apologise unreservedly. When designing this product we clearly didn’t think through all the implications and the product has been removed from sale.”

It’s good to see a corporation say “we fucked up, we sorry, we’ll stop selling the thing” rather than the usual non-apology-apology “we’re sorry if people were offended”

[chenille]

…Both sides of what? This story involves people who pointed out how this product could be read and a company that agreed and pulled it. What two sides are you talking about?

[anon33176345]

KMart was not alone in inadvertently offending

M&S pulls Christmas advert post after Palestinian flag criticism

[lumpmoose]