More Anti-American Images Found at German Subway Stores
By Susan Jones, CNSNews.com Morning Editor
August 04, 2004
http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewCulture....L20040804c.html
(CNSNews.com) - Picture this: a gigantic cheeseburger (with tomatoes and lettuce) slamming into two high-rise buildings, as cartoon characters run from the flaming ruins.
It's clearly a takeoff on the 9/11 terror attacks on the World Trade Center, and according to the Virginia-based Center for Individual Freedom, the illustration appears on page 18 of a 30-page "food diary" distributed by Subway sandwich shops in Germany.
Last week, the Center for Individual Freedom launched a grassroots campaign against anti-American tray-liners at German subway stores.
The tray-liners -- a promotion for the film "Super Size Me" -- showed an obese Statue of Liberty holding a burger and fries in her hands, under a headline asking, "Why are Americans so fat?" According to the Center for Individual Freedom, the headline used the word "Amis," which is considered a derogatory term for Americans.
The Center says complaints from Americans prompted German Subway shops to pull the tray-liners. But the cheeseburger-crashing-into-buildings image apparently is still out there -- distributed in German subway stores over the past few days. (The food diary also promotes the film "Super Size Me," and German Subway shops are distributing the diary.)
The new image shows that Subway's advertising is "far more disturbing and anti-American than previously thought," the Center for Individual Freedom said in a press release.
The cheeseburger image is found in a Subway "food diary" that encourages Germans to track their food consumption for 30 days. The diary is "replete with anti-American images," the Center said.
"Based on this new material, distributed for days in Subway's German stores, the Center for Individual Freedom demands that Subway apologize to American consumers immediately. If it fails to make amends for this transgression, its risks once again feeling the wrath of angry consumers across our nation," the Center for Individual Freedom said.
The Center said it intends to continue drawing attention to Subway's "tasteless anti-American marketing scheme in the coming days."