In a move designed to bring home the real horrors of war, UNICEF has unveiled a new advertising campaign in which the Smurf village is torn apart by fire and explosions. In a matter of seconds, mushroom-shaped houses are replaced by mushroom clouds.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/10/08/wsmurf08.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/10/08/ixhome.html

"Philippe Henon, a spokesman for Unicef Belgium, said his agency had set out to shock, after concluding that traditional images of suffering in Third World war zones had lost their power to move television viewers."

People were not being moved by pictures of actual people dying, so they went looking for something more . . .real, something with more depth than real people losing limbs or eyes. Something like . . .

"[a short film ] open[ing] with the Smurfs dancing, hand-in-hand, around a campfire and singing the Smurf song. Bluebirds flutter past and rabbits gambol around their familiar village of mushroom- shaped houses until, without warning, bombs begin to rain from the sky.

Tiny Smurfs scatter and run in vain from the whistling bombs, before being felled by blast waves and fiery explosions. The final scene shows a scorched and tattered Baby Smurf sobbing inconsolably, surrounded by prone Smurfs."

Okay. That is supposed to bring out the pathos in people like nothing else. Well, it appeared to work with very young children, who were apparently allowed to actually see their cartoon friends eviscerated on screen. They were noted to react in "wailing terror."

The theme for UNICEF's commercial? "Don't let war affect the lives of children."

Way to go, UNICEF.

I will admit that I am a bad person. Not evil in the "big 'E'" sense perhaps - I am no Charles Manson or IRS auditor. Still, I am the first to admit that I am not nice - I fit somewhere in the comfortable, "little 'e'" zone of evil.

So I must confess that not only do I find the commercial pretty nice, but I find myself hoping that UNICEF follows it up with a video game for the PS2 or Xbox.

C'mon. You know you'd buy it. You could fly one of five combat aircraft (F/A-22 Raptor; S37 Berkut; EuroFighter Typhoon; Chengdu J-10, or X35 "Gargamel" Joint Strike Fighter), and select ordinance to inflict maximum damage on dwellings or civilian population.

Think: the old Lemmings game, but with firepower, baby!

And cut scenes. Cut scenes where Daniel Day Lewis gives voice to the Smurf that used to be known as "Handy." ("The Smurfers Smurfing blew off my Smurf! Yeaarrgh!")

Of course, to add a bit of realism, the real danger to Baby Smurf and Smurfette would come only after the fighting ends, and UN troops arrive to keep the peace, like they did in the Congo (http://abcnews.go.com/2020/UnitedNations/story?id=489306&page=1); East Timor, Cambodia, Kosovo (http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,139460,00.html); or Bosnia (www.diacritica.com/sobaka/2003/immunity.html). Not to mention Rwanda (www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/bbing/stories/s19237.htm) or the present troubles in Darfur (http://edition.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/africa/01/31/sudan.report/).

So overall I give the television spot a rating of "Pretty Smurfy," and I am sure that the people of Rwanda and the Sudan - those who are left - will appreciate how much more real and meaningful the violence is when taken away from real people and placed onto small, blue annoying creatures that 90% of the viewing audience wanted to take out with HEBFs, anyway.

UNICEF needs my dimes to help build more smurf bombs? Where do I send the check?