Offensive Commercials

[gailkate]

I suspect you've all heard about the objections to GM's ad about the robot that commits suicide. I hadn't seen it, but here's the link.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQKk3PI-DW8

An organization for suicide prevention has protested:
"More needs to be done to prevent suicide," says AFSP National Board Member Mary Pat McMahon, "but that is hard to do when the issue continues to be made light of and stigmatized."

According to statistics given by AFSP, suicide has taken 300,000 American lives in the past ten years and is the fourth leading cause of death among adults aged 18-65 and the third leading cause of death among youth aged 15-24.
Are people getting too touchy or should commercials like this be pulled? Others have raised questions (the Snickers ad showing two guys accidentally kissing) but this one seems to me the most serious.

[Jane]

What were they thinking? Same with the guys who pulled off the Boston (Marketing) Massacre. I'm in marketing in a tangential way, and even I would know better than that.

[joew]

I'm not sure the ad makes light of suicide or stigmatizes it. (And BTW, I wonder what the middle ground is, where we can say suicide is to be prevented but not stigmatize it.) But it isn't something that would make me want to buy a GM product. It's distasteful.