The United Nations is launching a bizarre advertising campaign in New York City, which insults the intelligence of its audience. The campaign portrays New Yorkers as unsophisticated country bumpkins and makes light of a particular gripe of New Yorkers: the flouting of traffic laws by UN delegates.

The United Nations yesterday launched a $425,000 citywide advertising campaign with the motto "Everyone Is a Delegate," which imagines the intelligence of the average New Yorker comparable to that of a beauty pageant contestant.

In five television ads, which are the centerpiece of the campaign, actors portraying "true New Yorkers" address the U.N. General Assembly, telling world leaders that they have heard that there is poverty, hunger, and disease in the world. The characters — who hail from Manhattan, Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, and Astoria — then proceed to remark on a delegate's attire and suggest that U.N. diplomats should pay their parking tickets.

"To be honest, I haven't really heard of a lot of the countries that are represented here today," a character named Jeremy Kressner, who is meant to hail from the Bronx and appears dressed in a blue work shirt, tells delegates. "Uh, but I think that since we are all together in one room, we can do some great things, like guarantee human rights. And I can help. Pretty good at doing spreadsheets, if that's useful. All right, thanks." After the delegates applaud his simple wisdom, he briefly returns to the microphone, and exhorts, "Go Yankees."

Ed Lasky   9 07 05