Spilled milk for the pigheaded Pork Board

Here’s one for the “not gettin’ it” Hall of Fame. The National Pork Board, home of the longtime slogan “The other white meat,” actually sent a cease and desist letter to an Ohio mother and breast-feeding advocate (check out her blog, The Lactivist) for selling T-shirts on cafepress.com that tout breast milk as “The other white milk.” To quote John McEnroe, you cannot be serious. (The proceeds, by the way, were intended for a local milk bank.) But yes, it happened, and now, after the mother got 300 of her activist friends to alert the media, the story is way out there, and the Pork Board is working toward some sort of resolution. Here’s an idea: Why not just apologize for stupidity above and beyond the call of duty and then go away? As Church of the Customer points out, this whole affair looks particularly ridiculous in light of the, well, enlightened stance of the California Milk Processor Board, which sees the endless “Got milk?” parodies as flattery in its sincerest form.

—Posted by Catharine P. Taylor

February 7, 2007 | Permalink