World Advertising News

What the hell is this?

Well, I'll tell you what it purports to be. It purports to be an advertisement for a personal injury law firm. Therefore, you'd expect it to have a bunch of testimonials from downtrodden people whose suffering is slightly eased by the BIG CASH AWARD that the law firm helped them secure. Then we'd see a pair of attorneys sitting on a desk in front of a bunch of law reporters swearing that they "will fight for you" with all the inflection and passion that Stephen Hawking would give that line read. It's a pretty simple formula. The ads are always terrible, but they're safe. And if you're going to take a risk, try to make an awesome ad like this one.

Or you could just hurl racist imagery at us with the production values of a public access program...

So here you go, brought to you with an assist from Angry Asian Man:

You've got a fat white guy acting out a Charlie Chan parody in front of a greenscreened Benihana. It's the City Wok Guy sans the self-aware critical play of South Park.

He refers the viewer to McCutcheon & Hamner, whose website, mhatty.com, he helpfully spells out for us. Thankfully there were no Ls in that address. The lawyers of McCutcheon & Hamner specialize in car accident, workers compensation, and disability cases, and they are based in... oh what the hell, just take a guess. If you guessed "Alabama," then good job! Roll Tide.

The character's name is apparently "Mr. Wong Fong Shu" and, per Angry Asian Man, this character isn't the law firm's doing as much as the production company's. That company, Definitive Television, uses this character in a whole array of ads at client request. So make no mistake, McCutcheon & Hamner hired this production company (though Definitive cannot "confirm or deny" if the firm did so "directly or indirectly," whatever that means) so they knew what racist imagery they wanted their firm to embrace because they had to ask for this caricature to represent their law firm to the world. And even if the firm "didn't know" what this would look like, they do now and the ad is still up.

Definitive Television, for its part, seems to understand how offensive its character is and equally understands how little it cares:

In the world of politically incorrectness and the client's 1st amendment right, we created this satire comedy video. Keep in mind, we live in the world of Use our intentionally Cheesy B Rate Stick to create your commercial.

Over hundreds upon hundreds of verified customers. he does not say violent things of physical harm or assault. WARNING HE MAY OFFEND YOU AND IF YOU DON'T LIKE HIM, DON'T WATCH HIM. If you're offended and still watch him, we hope you enjoy picking the wad out of your panties and it gives your relief.

We have a lot of stops on the douchebag express here: the classic misapplication of the First Amendment bar on government infringement as an excuse to be an asshole to everyone; holding up violence as it's the only possible warrant for offense; the "then don't watch him" line, as though keeping bigotry alive among the club that "gets it" is fine if the people being humiliated for fun don't watch; and, of course, the feminization of anyone who might not approve. That's the John Rocker four-way parlay.

For good measure these guys list a bunch of professional acts that they think are equivalent. Except almost every one of them features someone generating comedy by mocking the stereotype (except C. Thomas Howell in Soul Man - that was just racist). The whole joke of the Robert Downey Jr. character in Tropic Thunder is that he's a pretentious asshole for thinking he can go in blackface. And how did "John Cho in Harold and Kumar" end up on here? I'm beginning to think these guys don't know Asian people really exist.

The commentary concludes:

We are respect your 1st amendment right and your freedom of opinion and speech on our comment board and will approve your comments. Currently out of respect to the Attorney Firm, we have elected to disable the comment threadat the request of McCutheon & Hamner, We may open them back up soon

Apparently they hired their own character to write their statement.

This Law Firm Specializes In Personal Injury... And Really Racist Commercials [Angry Asian Man]