Car Theft, Next Rape?

In a multi jurisdictional advertising campaign in metro Washington, DC by local and state police departments, the police are attacking the growing problem of auto theft by saying that car owners who do not do more with locks and alarms are the problem, not the thieves themselves.

The ad is crafted to make the listener sympathetic with the thief, and sends the message that the car owner was "asking for it" and that the car owner is the one to blame for the theft. The car owner is berated and insulted in the ad.

Maybe the police should use this this tactic to handle rape cases. The police could run radio advertising about how it is not the rapist, but the women who are the perpetrators of this crime because they have "asked for it" by their actions.

Virginia Scratchers (Lottery)

There are several state lotteries around, but an interesting advertising campaign comes from the Virginia State Lottery.

In the radio commercial a woman buys her son a number of "scratcher" cards. It turns out the young man does not make enough money to pay rent or own a car. The man is encouraged, by his Mom an Dad no less, to use the scratchers in the hopes he can make enough money from them to pay the rent.

Is this really the message the State of Virginia wants to send out? To tell people to buy lottery tickets to earn money to pay bills?

The lottery has been said to be a tax on those who can not do math. For me, there is no fun in playing the lottery. I'll accept that if someone has the extra money to waste, and they wish to waste it on the lottery, then they should do that. But I question state funds being used to advertise that playing the lottery is a way to earn a living.