creepy Army recruitment radio ad on Air America right now

[Muttocracy]

Listening to Maddow. There's an ad on I've heard once before - a Hispanic woman talking about her kid being a dropout risk, sad story, but somehow he gets on the right path. Then.

"give you teen the boost they need" something something to finish high school.

visit http://boostup.org/

brought to you by U.S. Army and the Ad Council.

Don't recommend visiting, but if you do and get past the splash screen, there's a tiny little army logo in the lower corner.

Blech.

on edit - maybe it's not Air America, just my local station with the ad.

And if you go deeper in the site, I think they're collecting MySpace and Facebook account info from people sending encouragement messages to teens to graduate. Creepy.

[NeedleCast]

1. Dont Really Think There's Anything Wrong with Boostup.org

It's ties to the military seem pretty small. From what I've seen, it's just about helping with a positive message.

Someone needs to kill their web designer though. Holy shit, that's just awful!

[Muttocracy]

2. I dunno - I'd like to know what they're doing with contact info.

Looks to me like collecting at-risk names.

Look at the How Do I Give a Boost link.

And yeah, their design is atrocious.

[NeedleCast]

3. I went through the whole process and gave a "boost"

didn't see anything suspicious. I didn't see anything to indicate that anyone was collecting names. Seemed completely anonymous.

[Berry Cool]

4. They have a vested interest in kids finishing high school

because technically, they're not supposed to take anyone who's not a high school graduate. But they're desperate now and in some cases they are stretching the rules. Obviously, they are in desperate need of more HS graduates to recruit as cannon fodder.