All right. We GET it. The initials of your name, FCUK, look amazingly like that other four letter word that always seems to get everybody so upset. When I first saw this campaign of yours in London several years ago, I thought it was really clever, a hey-they-can't-write-that-word-on-their-window-oh-wait-it's-NOT-that-word way to grab the attention of everybody who happens to walk by. But that was years ago and I think it's done its job. We get the joke. It was funny. Now it's not. Move on.
Seriously, don't be like the person at a dinner party who tells a joke that gets a laugh and who then proceeds to repeat the punchline over and over, turning a warm comedy moment into a realization that the teller of the joke actually isn't funny and simply happened to stumble onto something clever that he or she had nothing to do with the creation of. I know FCUK is a memorable marketing tool and that whatever gets your store noticed is worth its weight in gold, but it's the sort of thing that's working against a lot of us.
You see, a lot of us on the left (far left, center left, barely left, anything but the right - take your pick) are forever being accused by the right of ruining the culture, of being against family values and decency and all kinds of other stuff that we never said we were against. True, we like things to be very open and for things that people don't like or agree with to exist just so that there can be a fair representation of all opinions and viewpoints and tastes around. But few of us have ever sat down and said, "Okay, how can we destroy the American family today?"
I guess my problem with your campaign is the "low rent rebellion" quality of it. It's like a few years ago I was in an airport waiting to catch a flight and was sitting at the gate. There were families and grandmas and grandpas and little kids running around and all of a sudden this rap music starts blaring. This group of surly-looking teens came walking over with a huge boom box and sat down in the middle of all this family bliss and stared around at everyone with a "yeah, you got a problem with this?" look as their music contined to blare (this was before 9/11, in case you were wondering). That to me is the very definition of low rent rebellion, taking on an airport gate filled with old people and babies. Yes, my friends, what bad asses you are.
See, the other day I was walking past a French Connection UK in Pasadena and saw a family walking past with their grandmother, and the grandmother saw the FCUK sign and proceeded to go on a tirade about how the world was now such a terrible place and how young people were out of control and how if people were more religious this kind of thing wouldn't happen and all I could think was, "Great, we're all gonna get blamed for this." It was like in the last election. A friend of mine was talking to a friend of hers who had always voted Democratic before and yet this time the woman voted for Bush. My friend asked her why she did that and she said, "I have kids and I don't want them watching all this Paris Hilton stuff on TV, so I decided to vote for the party that is trying to protect values." Everybody I know thinks this Paris Hilton stuff is really stupid and annoying and they don't watch any of it. And yet somehow it's our fault that she's on TV all the time. Hey, WE'RE not watching it, so who the hell is??? Somebody's not telling the truth here.
Look, I don't mean to go on and on. It's just that we have plenty of battles we need to fight and expression that we have to protect, so don't make us also have to fight for stuff we find stupid. If I have to try and reassure someone on the right who's afraid that their beliefs and values are under attack, I'm not going to defend your ad campaign. I'd much rather get gay people their right to marry each other than help boost the profits on your latest pants sale.
So, please, I beg of you, retire the FCUK. Maybe get some cool pictures of Gene Hackman as Popeye Doyle from the movie you're named after and hang those up. That would be cool. Everybody likes that movie, right? And the guy's fighting drug dealers. What's more family values than that?