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You know, sometimes I get a burr up my bottom about something and I jump all over it. This week? It’s Burger King’s new campaign: Whopper Virgins.

Holy cow.

What next ... Pizza Sluts?

I had to sit down and write to Burger King, because I think the whole thing is very distasteful. It’s not enough that our kids have to contend with peer pressure every day at school, that they’re constantly pummeled with ads depicting sexy clothes and dolls like “Bratz”’ (sorry you Bratz lovers … but ...come on).

And then they go to a country like Thailand of all places, known for trafficking young girls in the sex trade and start talking about “Whopper Virgins” ... someone is shirking on their corporate responsibilities.

Granted, they didn’t have any young girls in the ad, but anyone who reads a paper or watches the news knows what goes on in Thailand.

Heck, watch the second installment of “Bridget Jones’s Diary” and you’ll see what I mean. The young gals stuck in a Thai prison ... you’ll get the picture. Not a virgin among them.

The whole campaign leaves you with the “try it, you’ll like it” feeling, but that was Alka-Seltzer.

Burger King’s “Have It Your Way” totally takes the whole sordid sex-trade in Thailand to a new level.

If you get it your way, you might not be a “Whopper Virgin.” And you might have to take some serious medicine to get over “having it your way.”

Eww. The whole thing is just rotten to the core, and how those marketing folks thought it was a good idea is beyond me. Never mind that they’re forcing themselves on people who have no idea what a burger is, and why would they want to when they can satisfy themselves with a lovely plate of pad thai noodles?

I went online to look at their campaign, and they supposedly have some villagers in a taste test room, and they’re filming the “new to the Whopper” folks trying to hold the burger and eat it. It’s so ridiculous. The supposed Thai villagers look more like village idiots than anything, and I’m not buying it for one second.

Then they segue into another scene of someone dogsledding across frozen tundra, carrying a piping hot Whopper in their supplies? Again ... how stupid.

Why didn’t they just go ahead and show all the young Thai nymphettes doing a pole dance and eating a Whopper while doing so?

Seriously, how stupid do the big corporations think we are?

Am I the only one who thinks its a bad marketing ploy? I just think it’s in very poor taste, and I won’t be trying a Whopper anytime soon.

A friend of mine told me that she got really rankled by a commercial last year, to the point that she called the local distributor and complained loudly about it.

I had to take the side of the corporation on this one, because I think the commercial is quite funny. Gross, but funny.

You know the one — Stanley Steemer — where the kid voices over “Mom! Look at Toby’s new trick!” and the mom screams “TOBY!” in the background as Toby scoots his canine booty across the carpet. Sorry. I just think that’s hilarious. Possibly in poor taste, but funny nonetheless.

There was a bit of an uproar a few years ago when McDonald’s tried a new campaign that was done in cartoon fashion, depicting African-American women eating some of the lighter menu fare, and one of the characters remarked how happy she was to have been able to get her “fruit buzz.”

Oooo. Not good. You don’t refer to a “buzz” on national television unless you’re doing a reality show or a cable show.
That campaign got canned — quickly.

Can you see me asking Sunnybuns if he got a “buzz” off his Fruit Loops?

“What’s a ‘buzz’, Mom?”

“It’s like this feeling you get in your head when you drink a beer or smoke a joint, son...”.

Sorry, but Momma ain’t stupid.

My son, he’d be passin’ out those Fruit Loop cereal bars at school and telling the kids, “Yeah, my mom says you can get a buzz off these!”

Fruit Buzz. Pizza Sluts. Whopper Virgins.

Where will it end?

Just keep giving us The King and let him do his funny stuff on the football field, or shoving a dollah in the back pockets of folks on the street.

That’t the kind of mindless campaigning I can handle.