Carnival Game Featured 'Obama' Target
Thursday, 05 Aug 2010, 11:27 AM EDT
(CANVAS STAFF REPORTS) - A Pennsylvania-based amusement company is apologizing following outrage over a shooting game that featured a likeliness of President Barack Obama .
Goodtime Amusements president Irwin L. Good Jr., 68, told the Philadelphia Inquirer that he had used the Alien Attack game for about five weeks without hearing complaints. Now, after a fairgoer's complaint and a subsequent news story triggered an outcry, the game has been removed.
The Inquirer said the complaints came on July 24 at Our Lady of Mount Carmel in Roseto, Pa., when Kathryn Chapman noticed a win-a-prize painted target featured a black man wearing a suit. He had a rolled up "health bill" in one hand and a belt buckle with an eagle that read "The Prez Says."
"I just can't believe how far things have come that now on church property you can shoot the president and get a prize if you hit him in the head or heart," Chapman said to the Easton Express Times . A story ran in the Express-Times and on lehighvalleylive.com, spurring additional criticism of Good and attention from media nationwide.
Good told the Lehigh Valley Express-Times that he didn't mean to offend anyone. He also said that he should not have let one of his vendors create the game and told the Express-Times that it will be changed to a pirate theme.
"I'm very supportive of the (president)," he said. "I voted for him."
He told the Inquirer that the target had alien antennae and did not look much like Obama.
"The face didn't look like him or anything like that," he said. "It wasn't designed to be that way. I guess you could see a likeliness to it if you wanted to."
Esther M. Lee, president of the Bethlehem chapter of the NAACP, disagrees.
"He knew what he was doing," she told the Inquirer. "It's not right. ... It's not funny, and he ought to pay."
The Express-Times reported that Roseto Mayor Desiree DeNicola and council president Michael Romano said they had not seen the game or heard any complaints.
"But if it's so, it's totally disrespectful to the office of the president," Romano said. "I don't think we should be teaching our kids, and there are a lot of kids at the Big Time, to be disrespectful."
(CANVAS STAFF REPORTS) - A Pennsylvania-based amusement company is apologizing following outrage over a shooting game that featured a likeliness of President Barack Obama .
Goodtime Amusements president Irwin L. Good Jr., 68, told the Philadelphia Inquirer that he had used the Alien Attack game for about five weeks without hearing complaints. Now, after a fairgoer's complaint and a subsequent news story triggered an outcry, the game has been removed.
The Inquirer said the complaints came on July 24 at Our Lady of Mount Carmel in Roseto, Pa., when Kathryn Chapman noticed a win-a-prize painted target featured a black man wearing a suit. He had a rolled up "health bill" in one hand and a belt buckle with an eagle that read "The Prez Says."
"I just can't believe how far things have come that now on church property you can shoot the president and get a prize if you hit him in the head or heart," Chapman said to the Easton Express Times . A story ran in the Express-Times and on lehighvalleylive.com, spurring additional criticism of Good and attention from media nationwide.
Good told the Lehigh Valley Express-Times that he didn't mean to offend anyone. He also said that he should not have let one of his vendors create the game and told the Express-Times that it will be changed to a pirate theme.
"I'm very supportive of the (president)," he said. "I voted for him."
He told the Inquirer that the target had alien antennae and did not look much like Obama.
"The face didn't look like him or anything like that," he said. "It wasn't designed to be that way. I guess you could see a likeliness to it if you wanted to."
Esther M. Lee, president of the Bethlehem chapter of the NAACP, disagrees.
"He knew what he was doing," she told the Inquirer. "It's not right. ... It's not funny, and he ought to pay."
The Express-Times reported that Roseto Mayor Desiree DeNicola and council president Michael Romano said they had not seen the game or heard any complaints.
"But if it's so, it's totally disrespectful to the office of the president," Romano said. "I don't think we should be teaching our kids, and there are a lot of kids at the Big Time, to be disrespectful."
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