THE US restaurant chain Denny’s has issued an apology after an advertisement “celebrating” the 150th anniversary of the end of the Famine provoked anger in the Irish-American community.
Séamus Boyle, president of the largest Irish-American organisation, the Ancient Order of Hibernians (AOH) – which has close to 100,000 members – said that in the ad, “A guy is sitting in Denny’s eating pancakes, and he says that to celebrate the end of the 150th anniversary of the end of the Great Famine they’re not running short of anything, including pancakes.”
Boyle called the advertisement “a slap in the face of our ancestors who died”. He said he received hundreds of telephone calls and e-mails from around the country, and AOH members inundated Denny’s with complaints. The AOH was poised to begin a boycott and demonstrations outside Denny’s restaurants when the company pulled the advertisement on Sunday. The group has 1,500 outlets around the world.
Denny’s responded to the complaints with a four-sentence e-mail apology saying it was “certainly not the intention of the company to offend anyone or any group”.
Stephanie Fink, Denny’s public relations contractor, said the advertisement was produced by Goodby Silverstein and Partners. Asked why no one realised it was in bad taste, she said she could say nothing else on the subject.
On his Irishcentral.com website, Irish-American commentator Niall O’Dowd slammed what he called Denny’s “mealy-mouthed apology”. “What they need to say is, ‘We apologise to the Irish-American community for depicting the Irish Famine as some kind of humorous event . . .’ ” O’Dowd wrote.