New York's 'anti-Semitic' vodka billboard

Wodka vodka tries to be funny with ads promising "Christmas quality" at "Hanukkah pricing," but not everyone appreciates the joke

Best Opinion:  Daily Mail, ADL, Heeb

The image: Both anti-Semitism groups and consumers have condemned a series of New York billboards for Wodka, an inexpensive Polish vodka. (See full image of the "anti-Semitic" ad below.) On Tuesday, Wodka decided it would take down the billboards, which feature the slogan "Christmas quality" at "Hanukkah pricing" alongside a photo of two dogs, one in a Santa hat, the other in a yarmulke. "We never intended to offend people," says Brian Gordon, who was the creative director on the campaign and is himself Jewish. "But if we're actually... upsetting people that's not in the spirit of our marketing so we're taking it down."

The reaction: This "is so bad and so wrong, it should drive a man to drink," says Don Surber in The Daily Mail. "Someone should get fired." Indeed, this is "crude and offensive," says the Anti-Defamation League's Regional Director, Ron Meier, in a press release. In invokes a long-standing anti-Semitic stereotype about Jews and money and implies that Christmas has a higher value than Hanukkah. "Give us a break," says Jewdar at Heeb. This isn't "crude and offensive," so much as it's "amusingly inappropriate." We haven't tried Wodka yet, but the ADL's reaction has made us thirsty.

 

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