Many readers have already commented in other threads about the silliness of a union's advertisements. The union in question is concerned about health care, and so, for every diary with health care tags, it posts a little flag at the bottom of the diary which says in part "sponsored by" the union.
The ad seems to create a serious amount of confusion. The diarists do not know if the ad is going to be placed in their diary, and the diarists themselves are not "sponsored by" the union in question.
People have pointed out that the ads are misleading, and worse, the ads allow someone to hijack the ad to create the illusion that the union supports the diarist, when clearly the union position is different.
This diary is designed to show precisely why this sort of in-diary advertisement is a bad idea
Healthcare is a serious issue. Single-payer is a serious issue. But now, let's imagine that instead of treating these issues seriously, I wrote a diary that says the following:
UNIONS ARE EVIL! HEALTH CARE ONLY FOR THE RICH! IT IS THE UNIONS THAT POOCHED EVERYTHIZNG IN THIS WORLD. HEALTH CARE SINGLE PAYER IS TEH STOOPID! EPIC FAIL! EPIC, EPIC FAIL.
Pretty damn silly, huh? So that the record is clear, I don't believe any of that shit.
Now, imagine how silly it would be to have an advertisement at the bottom of this that suggested that my idiotic rant above was "sponsored by" a union.
Let's see if they actually put that ad on this extremely dumbass diary. If so, would someone please let the Union rep know that he needs to change his ad so that this sort of problem doesn't happen again....the last thing we need is to have the union appear to be endorsing some dumbass crap written by a agent provocateur.
Updated -- My God. They did put the ad on this diary.