Sears and JCPenney Pull Ads From Saturday Night Live Due to 'Djesus Uncrossed' Video

As NewsBusters previously reported, Saturday Night Live last month aired a mock movie trailer depicting Jesus Christ returning to Rome to exact revenge in the gory fashion of Quentin Tarantino and Sam Peckinpah.

On Wednesday, the American Family Association announced that it had gotten Sears and JCPenney to stop advertising on the online SNL episodes featuring that trailer:

This week, two of the largest and oldest retailers in the United States have both responded to American Family Association (AFA) by pulling their advertising from NBC’s show, “Saturday Night Live” (SNL).

Late last month, AFA and its supporters notified both Sears and JCPenney that the portrayal of Jesus Christ as a revenge-seeking murderer is an affront to all people of faith, especially Christians. AFA urged Sears and its subsidiary Kmart in addition to JCPenney to pull their advertising from NBC.com’s “Saturday Night Live.”[...]

Sears sent a letter to AFA, stating, “Thanks for bringing it to our attention, it wasn’t supposed to happen and we’re taking steps to make sure it doesn’t happen again. Going forward our ads will not run in this form again around SNL.” JCPenney did not advertise on the next SNL show and removed their ad from the NBC on line version of the SNL episode.

The Hollywood Reporter added Thursday:

In an email to The Hollywood Reporter, the retail chain acknowledged that some of its customers found the skit offensive, so it yanked its online commercials but has not abandoned the TV show.

“We received customer feedback about our ads running on NBC.com and Hulu in a rotation with other advertisers around the online rebroadcast of that particular SNL episode,” Sears said. “We informed customers that it wasn’t supposed to happen, and while going forward we may advertise on the broadcast, we’ve taken steps to ensure that our commercials do not air online exactly as they did in this situation.”

Kudos to Sears and JCPenney for realizing there are limits to decency.

(HT Red Alert Politics)