February 19, 2007
Feds Roll the Dice
The ATTB thinks Daisuke Matsuzaka broke the law by drinking beer in a commerical:
The regulation in question is foolish even as applied to the United States. Consumers should be able to decide for themselves whether or not seeing athletes chugging beer is a good recommendation for the product. While an ad that incorrectly claims that drinking beer "will enhance athletic prowess" may indeed be misleading advertising, an ad that merely portrays an athlete drinking a beer is just ordinary "image advertising" that consumers are more than capable of evaluating for themselves. I am not going to get into technical First Amendment analysis here. But it seems to me that censoring advertising not for false factual claims about the product, but merely for promoting a favorable image of a product that the government disapproves of, is a clear violation of constitutional free speech rights - even if the courts have wrongly concluded otherwise.
What makes the ATTB action against Matsuzaka particularly reprehensible, however, is that the ad in question isn't being aired in the United States. It is a Japanese-language ad that will only be shown in Japan, where ads showing athletes drinking beer are perfectly legal. Not only is the ATTB engaging in censorship of American advertising, it also claims the right to censor ads in a foreign country.
There must be a lot of Yankees fans at the ATTB.
Hat tip, Instapundit.
Posted by David Pinto at
08:19 AM
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There must be a lot of Yankees fans at the ATTB.
Funny, Dave. But no, this Yankee fan seriously disagrees with this stupidity. It's none of our business what Matsuzaka does in Japan, as long as he's not committing crimes. Personally, I'm looking forward to seeing him pitch... especially if the Yankees' bats clobber him. :-)
(The one interesting twist, though, is that the ad DOES feature him putting on Red Sox clothing. That said, notice that he's not wearing anything with a Red Sox logo in the scene where he drinks the beer. And that scene is only, like, one second long.)
Somin needs to dial it back some. Reprehensible? What Mike Nifong did was reprehensible. This is the government in motion: an idiot beaurocratic looking to expand his turf and grab some easy headlines. There are so many examples of dispicable government over reach on the federal, state and local levels. Resnick is wrong, and Matsuzaka's legal reps will dice the opposition. On the chance that that effort fails, Senator Kerry can call the ATTB on behalf of his friends at Fenway. And Senator Kennedy can call on behalf of his friends in the bottle.
OK this is an old story just now getting blown slightly out of proportion. If you follow the linkage, the Herald article that started it all came out on the 11th, and all the guy from the ATTB did was explain their role with regard to regulating alcohol ads. All he said was that their "jurisdiction runs to false and misleading ads," and that they'd probably at least give it a look. I'm going to guess that someone from the Herald called them up, said, "You hear about this commercial where a Japanese pitcher drinks beer?" and got that response. Wouldn't worry too much...