Google Gets Politically Correct – In Spades.

I work at an online ad agency. We have clients. Those clients pay us to manage their online advertising campaigns. Google has just scolded me and removed one of my client’s ads because I used a word in an advertisement they felt was “in violation of their policies and guidelines”. When Google takes down one of our ad campaigns, it hurts our client’s sales and therefore threatens my very livelihood. So you’ll forgive me if I endulge myself and share some of the the details with you now.

One of our clients is an electrical supply manufacturer. They make things like cable ties, butt splice connectors, wire markers, block spades, heat shrink tubing and fork terminals. Did you spot the offensive word there, folks? Not so fast, butty.

A block spade is some sort of a cable connector/insulator and is in wide use by electicians and contractors everywhere. This is also the term that Google felt offensive enough to warrant abruptly stopping my client’s sales of last night by removing their ads from their almighty publishing network.

I can see you’re confused. But then again, so was I. Let me try and explain.

“Spade” – on it’s own and only in certain circumstances – is an antique racial slur. When you’re referring to a poker game or planting a tree, it’s a perfectly acceptable facet of the King’s English. Dictionary definitions include: “sturdy digging tool”, “black, leaf-shaped figure on certain playing cards” and “castrated man or beast”. It can even be used as a verb when describing the act of digging.

Calling an African American a “spade” is something your Grandfather might have done right before cranking up his Model-T Ford or cranking one out to Betty Page. My point is, it’s not even a racial epithet that’s in use any more. If Google is penalizing electrical supply manufacturers for using the word, in an obviously non-pejorative format, I sincerely pity the garden tool and playing card industries. Oh, and Western civilization.