...and cherry-topped ice cream scoops...

Well, with a little imagination and the proper angle for the photographs. . . .  I'm wondering, if in the interests of cultural diversity, different flavors of ice cream will be featured.  In case the aliens really have landed and are dwelling among us lime sherbet would work, I guess.  <grin></grin>

aMike

I think the original is a pretty good ad campaign: it is pretty well documented that rates of obesity, diabetes and many other adult health problems are lower among those who were breast-fed (the nipples, I take it, were bottle nipples). What's creepy here is that the Department of Health and Human Services would collude with an industry that wants to continue to promote a less healthy product. This passage of the article caught my eye:

But other current and former HHS officials say the muting of the ads was not the only episode in which HHS missed a chance to try to raise the breast-feeding rate. In April, according to officials and documents, the department chose not to promote a comprehensive analysis ...of multiple studies on breast-feeding, which generally found it was associated with fewer ear and gastrointestinal infections, as well as lower rates of diabetes, leukemia, obesity, asthma and sudden infant death syndrome.

...

A top HHS official said that at the time, Suzanne Haynes, ...argued strongly in favor of promoting the new conclusions in the media and among medical professionals. But her office, which commissioned the report, was specifically instructed by political appointees not to disseminate a news release.

Wanda K. Jones, director of the women's health office, said agency media officials have "all been hammering me" about getting Haynes to stop trying to draw attention to the AHRQ report. HHS press officer Rebecca Ayer emphatically told Haynes and others in mid-July that there should be "no media outreach to anyone" on that topic, current and former officials said.

Of course, the fact that the US lags in breasfeeding among developed nations is not unconnected to the fact that the US lags in providing parenting leave - I'm pretty sure that, the less time off a mother gets, the less likely she is to breastfeed for any period of time.

Western Europe can be pretty uptight with breastfeeding, as well.

I think it was Manchester, this year, that pushed through a new ordinance making it illegal to harass or discriminate against a mother breastfeeding in public.  Not because it's a liberal city, but because of the complaints of mothers who are constantly harassed.

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Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur.

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Where everybody knows your name...
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I shouldn't be by this point in time but I am outraged that corporate profits of big pharmas are more important than the Health of our country's children.  The first H in HHS is supposed to stand for "Health".  But the overriding concern in this case was for the public's health but for the corporate health of drug companies.  The fact that HHS made corporate profits a higher priority than the public's health is par for the course with the Bush administration.  They did the same thing on global warming.  The science was skewed in that case trying to call into question whether global warming was something that was actually real.  Big pharma didn't even try that tact here.  What was the big argument?  They didn't want to see woman made to feel "guilty" about not breast feeding.  If the facts about breast feeding were made public more women would breast feed their infants, less of those infants would become sickly teens and young adults and the mother would feel less guilt.  The industries rationale on the subject doesn't even rise to the level of "Junk Science".  I can see politicians and political parties being lobbied but I think the line needs to be drawn with agencies whose responsibility is to protect the health and safety of Americans.  They should not be interfered with and lobbied by the industries they are supposedly overseeing.    

My home when I am not ranting here...

So, let's talk about the issue raised by implication in the WaPo article: that is, whether the government should be financing "edge" advertising campaigns which seek to demonize classes of people for the act of using legal products.

An education campaign is one thing; a propaganda campaign is another thing entirely.  Should the government of a republic be treating its citizens as unthinking subjects of its manipulative designs?  Should progressives support this form of patronizing relationship?

Is it propaganda if it's true?  And is it demonizing a class of people if it's just an ad campaign?

Not that you don't raise serious points about the role of government, and maybe more important, the propriety of the government in this form of public discourse.  But I'd argue that they aren't as serious as all that.  At this stage, though there is certainly a contingent that seeks to shame parents who go the formula route, breastfeeding is beneficial enough, and it is still uncommon enough, that it's promotion is an important public health goal.

I'd rather see the money for an ad campaign go into programs to make it easier for more mothers to breastfeed.  But I'm not sure that such programs could be effective in the absence of efforts to encourage it. 

I use the term boob-fixation because let's face it, boobs are the ones fixated.

I don't suppose that the Cafe is an appropriate venue for a encomium to the female breast, but I do feel the need to justify myself as an unabashed boob boob.

Whether the source is nature or nurture, I admit to be unqualifiedly smitten by 'em...and female legs, and female fannies. Pudenda themselves do not possess nearly the same visual magnetism as these enticements.

Is this proclivity of mine to be characterized as infantile? If so, that's OK with me (even as I approach 60 autumns, descriptions of my attitude seldom progress past "adolescent" anyway), but shall we similarly label other such basic drives as hunger and thirst?

Of all below-the-chin female allures, a pair of high, firm, perky breasts is the most erotogenic to me. I suspect that the reason for this is hard-wired into me and most other men. As Desmond Morris pointed out, evolution has designed the human female bosom -- and the human male reaction to it -- to echo the appearance of the quadripedal mammal's buttocks. For other primates, the nether regions act as a powerful sexual attractant. Inasmuch as the upright human female can not conveniently present her sexual invitiation via her rump the way, say, a chimpanzee would, nature has provided the paired breasts with a similar appearance in order to draw male attention. This proxy of boobies for bottom may also account for our uptight society's proscription of the breasts' gratuitous display.

Society's insistance on hiding the mammaries, of course, only strengthens their charm. Show me a male who can forgo a peek through a tiny gap in the placket of a blouse and I will show you a gay man. The temptation is, in the words of Robert Palmer, simply irresistable. And dammit when a frilly B cup interrupts the view!

A word about sexual objectivity. I think women are wrong, hypocritical, and unrealistic to complain of being the objects of male sexual desire. It's the way we're built. Sorry about that. Now, if a woman complains that a man's interest in her begins and ends with such prurience, she has a pressable case, and I think this is the real complaint even when not expressed explicitly. I don't speak for all MANkind, but we don't think that tits and ass are all you are, but we do confess that they are very important properties, so fetchingly blended with others such as intelligence, humor, and tenderness.

Having never lived in a curvacious carcass I can't say this for certain, but I strongly suspect that women also practice a significant measure of objectifying, although they are normally more circumspect about it, more inclined to tastefulness, and sexy as hell when they do it to me.

You're right, Devon, I phrased that badly. I meant that there is no body of evidence that points to a good chance of specific health problem to most viewers, so hard core, edgy ads would not seem called for as they are with cigarettes where almost any smoker will have severe ill effects. I agree that the government should be promoting all things healthy, when the science is solid, but without the scare tactics.

Absolutely. And I don't know if there is such a thing as proportion in propaganda. If there is, we haven't seen it from the government and little from the fair and balanced media in this mendacious epoch.

Well, where does it end? I can't imagine what a PSA warning of the (unexaggerated) dangers of eating at McDonald's might look like- Ronald McDonald inflating diners like balloons until they burst, splattering secret sauce all around, I guess. At the very least, a hamburger with the universal "No" slash across it should be posted below every stop sign in the country!