Business: Advertising for Trouble

Milk campaign sours blacks, Finnair's crashes

The line between what is tasteful and offensive, humorous and insulting in advertising seems, like the line between treason and righteous rebellion, to be largely a matter of timing. Witness a current ad campaign by the California Milk Advisory Board and an aborted one by Finnair, the Finnish airline. The milk ads, which a few years ago might have seemed merely innocuous, are under fire for alleged sexism and racism; the Finnair ad has been withdrawn because of protests that it made light of a subject of growing concern to feminists, judges and others: wife beating.

The...