Boy Scouts of America Do Not Appreciate Jokes About the Hitler Youth

On one final April Fool's Day note, our local blog buddy Bucky Turco at Animal New York pulled a pretty fast one on a time-honored national group. First, he grabbed images like the one you see to the right from the Boy Scouts' official website. Then he plastered his blog with the images in place of standard ads, as if the Scouts had given him a big buy. But anyone who clicked the ad was in for a surprise, because they led to an Australian newspaper article about how the Boy Scouts founder Lord Baden-Powel met with Hitler Youth chief of staff Hartmann Lauterbacher back in 1937. Needless to say, the Scouts were not thrilled about the connection!

In a celebratory post this evening, Animal NY put the Scouts' response up for all to see. There's no mention of the Nazis, but the history probably didn't do anything to quell their "copyright concerns." Instead, their letter is all in legalese:

Boy Scouts of America is the owner of the well-known trademark and trade name SCOUTING.  As you are no doubt aware, SCOUTING, is a trademark used to identify activities and events related to the Boy Scouts of America and in 1916, the United States Congress recognized that the marks and names of the Boy Scouts of America program had to be protected and Congress passed a Special Act of Congress (36 USC § 21 et. Seq.) granting the Boy Scouts exclusive rights to emblems, badges, marks, and words and phrases.  This would include, for example, but not be limited to, the words SCOUT, SCOUTS and SCOUTING and the "Fleur de lis" emblem.
...
We trust that you will remove all metatags, keywords, visible or hidden texts including trademark presently appearing on the above-cited web site(s) and any other web site(s), or draw this issue to the attention of the appropriate person(s).

Last we checked, the Nazi Youth-linked ads are still functioning, so give them a click before midnight and brush up on your history.

[jcoscarelli@villagevoice.com / @joecoscarelli]