California Department of Public Health backs away from Balkans ("Our Neighborhood, Our Rules")
One of the many ways the California Department of Public Health spends "their" money is on the "Network for a Healthy California" (cachampionsforchange.net), which operates a website promoting a healthy diet and which puts up billboards such as that seen here or in the following screengrab of this page cachampionsforchange.net/en/OurCommunity.php:
There are many things one could say about this effort and the billboard specifically, with nanny statism being the least concern. The main concern is that such billboards foster the belief that one group of people - specifically, one ethnicity - "owns" a neighborhood. Don't think that? Well, then imagine the "concern" if a billboard similar to the above used a white woman; wouldn't non-whites be more than a bit concerned and wouldn't they have a point?
As another example a new form of the billboard has been spotted using a less Balkans-oriented tag line: "My Kitchen, My Rules" (photo of a similar ad here). I spotted that billboard on Western around Pico on the edges of Koreatown; the area where it was spotted is a previously mostly black area now trending Latino, and the billboard featured a black woman. I doubt whether Latinos in the area would appreciate her image proclaiming it to be "her" neighborhood.
I don't think anything - except the absurdly easy task of completely discrediting the far-lefties in the California legislature - could be done about campaigns like this, but perhaps even the CDPH realized there are limits to far-leftism.
Posted to California at June 23, 2008 08:26 PM
