Web content for Tuesday, June 7th, 2011

First Guess: What's Up Washington State's Butt?
Video via Current.com
via YouTube, h/t fferkleheimer

Special bonus audio (Fresh Air with Terri Gross)

The head up the butt over the advertising slogan "What's up your butt?" I'm Keith Olbermann in the Countdown newsroom with a First Guess.

District Health Boards in Southeastern Washington State rarely make national news and yet the one in Kennewick just did.

The Benton-Franklin Board originally stuck out its neck. It unanimously authorized putting its district logo on a billboard campaign to increase awareness of Colon Cancer.

The billboards, in a manner short but not exactly sweet, read "What's Up Your Butt?"

Then, residents complained that the ad was in poor taste.

How they did this, we can only guess. It must have taken a generous amount of free time to (a) search for the correct contact at the county health district board and to subsequently (b) voice a petty complaint about taking offense from viewing a billboard. A colonoscopy, one of the most effective preventive measures against any form of cancer, rarely takes even an hour - and these people had to have spent nearly that much time complaining.

Colorectal cancer is known as a "silent" disease for the complete absence of warning signs. There are no symptoms. Screening tests and colonoscopies are crucial in detecting problems at their earliest, treatable stages. Supporting colon cancer screening and awareness is common sense that does not require personal courageousness.

Benton County Commissioner Shon Small told the Tri-City Herald that the local government is "going to do what the taxpayers wanted."

Current script ends here, unofficial transcript continues

Spinelessly rejecting a motivating campaign to shed light on a silent and deadly disease because residents allegedly complained of poor taste is indefensible, and shows, in fact, the poorest of taste. Colorectal cancer takes 49,000 Americans from us annually. Most of them unnecessarily. It was the disease that killed football's Vince Lombardi. It was the disease that killed my friend the actress Elizabeth Montgomery. It was the disease that put my father in the hospital before his terminal illness.

And all I know is, the What's Up Your Butt advertising campaign did what it was supposed to do. It got people thinking about getting a colonoscopy, and to me, stopping something that actually worked towards that goal is true bad taste. And it is unspeakable.

See you on Current on June 20th.