AFP reports:
China’s official media and outspoken bloggers on Friday protested over a German advert promoting the use of condoms which shows revolutionary leader Mao Zedong as a sperm cell alongside Adolf Hitler and Osama bin Laden.
The Communist Party’s People’s Daily devoted a page to the storm, quoting internet commentaries which called for the makers of the advert to apologise to China.
(Via the Corner.)
Presumably, they are offended by the comparison of Mao — a truly accomplished mass murderer with 77 million murders to his name — with someone like Hitler (whose 21 million murders leave him a distant third place) or bin Laden (who hasn’t even come close to notching his first million, if not for lack of trying). I’m sure they feel that only Stalin (43 million murders) would be a worthy comparison.
POSTSCRIPT: For the record, I think the ad is in very poor taste, but certainly not because of any unfairness to history’s worst murderer.
Internet Scofflaw 