This will hurt me...

Perhaps the only way that you could trump the obnoxious and boorish racism at the base of today’s advertisement for coffee would indeed be eschewing coloured models at all! I am sure that Maxwell House’s logic was one rooted in the question of why even bothering use a primitive savage when you can find two perfectly decent and upstanding white folk, get them to open up the can of boot polish and blacken themselves up for our amusement? Dare I suggest that – tub of Kiwi aside – you would struggle to find two more Caucasian-looking characters than these two Uni revue rejects? I hate this ad.

Now, I am certain that the brainiacs behind this little fundraising effort for the war didn’t mean any harm by their choice of words here, but that’s kind of the problem, isn't it? It reminds me of the time that the former Collingwood Football Club President (and budding-MENSA candidate) Allen McAllister clumsily attempted to refute accusations of institutionalised racism against Indigenous players. He decided that the best course of attack was to explain how he did not have a problem with coloureds , per se ... “As long as they conduct themselves like white people, well, off the field, everyone will admire them and respect them.” In the words of teh Internets, EPIC FAIL.