Yesterday, I was incensed by something. I meant to write about it then, but I got distracted. Blame my mosquito-like attention span. But now I’m incensed again and I just happen to be sitting around my house not doing anything.
I was driving my son to his grandmother’s house yesterday. He’s reading a book (hooray literacy). And I was listening to one of the local Spanish language radio stations. About an hour into our drive he was half-way through his Captain Underpants book and I hadn’t heard an English word since he started. Then I was accosted by the height of American arrogance. It was the kind of thing that perfectly illustrated the “ugly American” stereotype.
An hour into my trip, I heard the mid-Western English that has become the standard of television presenters the whole country over. It was a commercial for a weight-loss supplement. Some cut-rate Jenny Craig program. Did I mention it was entirely in English? Did I mention I was listening to the Spanish language station? Anything else I’m leaving out?
It’s not like this was a television spot that they would have had to re-dub, re-shoot, and possible recast to create a Spanish version. This was a radio spot! All they had to do was hand their script to any solidly bilingual person and get a translation knocked out. It would have taken about 20 extra minutes. But that was too much for this company to bother with.
Wouldn’t it have been easier for them to just come right out and say, “We don’t respect you our potential customer enough to bother reaching out the slightest little bit. Screw you, buy our product. Oh, and go back to Mexico.” Because really, isn’t that what they were saying anyway?
