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We’d expect a poorly Photoshopped picture of President Barack Obama lip locking with Venezuela’s controversial leader Hugo Chávez to appear on some Miami Republican’s blog, not in an ad associated with a clothing company. Yet United Colors of Benetton is responsible for the bizarre image. It’s apparently supposed to get us to stop hating, not give us weird nightmares.
Benetton is no stranger to including provocative and controversial images in its ads, and the latest round of ads is meant to help launch the company’s latest charity effort, the UnHate Foundation. The foundation claims it “seeks to contribute to the creation of a new culture of tolerance, to combat hatred, building on Benetton’s underpinning values.”
We’re not really sure how this image exactly meets that end:
The campaign also features images of the pope smooching Imam Ahmed Mohamed el-Tayeb; Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas swapping spit with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu; and German Chancellor Angela Merkel making out with French President Nicolas Sarkozy (who look really cute together actually; forget that Bruni chick, Sarkozy).
Anyway, uh, we guess after seeing this image we’re all supposed to go “UnHate” people. Mostly, though, we’ll just wait for the image to pop up on right-wing blogs out of context.
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