@PJH said:@Iago said:I deduce from the existance of this thread that there is presumably some racist overtone to the word "chicken" in the USA, but it has no such connotations in Britain. Google [australia kfc advert pulled] for some 'education.'
For those that can't be bothered... KFC had to pull an ad only shown on AU televisions, because some people in America decided it was racist. To belabor the point, it was not shown (or at least not intended to be shown - dunno if Fox or whoever has shown it) in the US.
From the first link at the time of posting:
The commercial, featuring a white Australian cricket fan offering fried chicken to West Indies supporters, has been pulled from the air in Australia.
[...]
The Australian TV commercial was picked up by the US media, including the New York Daily News and Baltimore Sun, and drew heated debate, with some Americans accusing Australians of being racist because it perpetuates a stereotype that African Americans eat a lot of fried chicken.
I'm quite unsure what to actually think of this.... Considering it was in context - the West Indians were in the country playing cricket and the white guy was distracting the fans from cheering for their team. If the Poms were over it probably would have been the guy distracting the Barmy Army - would that have been "racist"? There are other KFC ads where the same guy attacts a player (using a KFC wrap thing) for his autograph, or buys his friends chicken for helping him concrete his yard (so they can play backyard cricket without getting bindiis in their feet), or even steals food from the guy sitting next to him (he was too busy looking at his KFC food to notice a cricket ball hitting him in the head). I think it was worse because of the recent(ish) blackface Red Faces segment on Hey Hey it's Saturday. That incident has created lots of jokes against Harry Connick Jr. :)