Amazon Pulls Products Making Light Of Mental Illness
| CHICAGO (CBS) — The line between irreverent and hurtful came into play this week as Amazon found itself being called out by a British media outlet for selling products making light of mental health conditions. Amazon pulled some of the offending items after being contacted by British media site iNews. Yet coffee mugs and clothing emblazoned with slogans jesting about afflictions including schizophrenia and obsessive-compulsive disorder remain on the retailer’s site, iNews reported on Wednesday.
Contacted by CBS MoneyWatch, a U.K.-based spokesperson for Amazon stated in an email: “All Marketplace sellers must follow our selling guidelines, and those who don’t will be subject to action including potential removal of their account. The products in question are no longer available.”  (Credit: Amazon.Co.UK) It was unclear if the statement covered products sold worldwide or only in the U.K., and Amazon declined to elaborate. Amazon’s selling policies for third-party merchants include prohibiting “inappropriate or offensive behavior,” which extends to information “in listings, content or images.” Still, as relayed by iNews in its story, a search of both Amazon’s U.K. and U.S. sites found items including an “obsessive-compulsive action figure,” which comes with a surgical mask and hypoallergenic moist towelette, as well as multiple t-shirts and coffee mugs with joking references to schizophrenia. The retailer has found itself in hot water before over products with messages found to be objectionable by some, including a sweatshirt sold in 2017 describing anorexia as “like bulimia, except with self-control.” |
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Interesting topic. Of course there is "free speech" in the sense that people have a right to make fun of the mentally ill. But should that ridicule be appreciated and you could say appealed to in the marketplace?
Now some will say this is "political correctness" , but why isn't it just common decency?
I don't think they are pulling the worst offender.
There is some visceral appeal to wiping one's ass with Donald Trump's words, but I think i'll pass.
This is off topic, but as it seems to pertain to mental illness , and I dont want to start a new seed for it, I think I will put it here.
A Congressional candidate in Alabama and longtime aide to former Senate candidate Roy Moore declared his love of the Second Amendment by announcing on Tuesday that he would give away an AR-15 rifle to a random stranger in a fun Memorial Day drawing.
that is a great idea, nothing wrong with it