To the fallen, the office workers, the families; to the firemen, the first responders, the workers; to the the hole in the ground, the empty space in the sky, to the the gray miasma—here’s a free bowl of soup. Thanks Shoney’s. I can’t tell whether that’s incredibly tacky or deeply poetic. Either way, it’s free soup.
(Photo: samwilkinson.org) Note: The post originally credited Econolodge, but after speaking with the photographer more, we think it was actually Shoney’s, billed above on the same sign, dispensing the free soup. The picture was taken in Morgantown, West Virginia.
If they want to give me free soup because thousands of Americans were murdered on this day (yesterday), I’m not going to stop them.
It’s free soup!
But how much free soup is there?
@Nick1693: Free soup isn’t free.
I understand the logic…soup=comfort, but it still sounds incredibly tacky. Wonder what kind of soup?
The Junior High school around us had a beautiful arrangement of flags just for 9-11. Unfortunately, they removed them before I could come back with a camera.
@Rolcol: Why???
@Gstein: I was soooo waiting on that!! Thanks
@ARP: I agree – and I think it’s disgusting. You cannot make a sale out of EVERYTHING! It’s just WRONG!
Shoe Carnival had a freakin’ MLK Day sale…seriously?? MLK didn’t give a rat’s ass about your ability to buy one pair of Nikes and get another pair half off.
@shorty63136: but you forget the annual President’s Day sales, where i see commercials of Abraham Lincoln telling me about mattresses 80% off
aww…free soup!
it’s probably done in patriotic zeal, so I can’t really hit em on the tackiness aspect of it all.
Should have been apple-pie.
@Triterion: Or freedom pie. Only filling from apples in the US.
/kidding. I don’t think freedom pies every existed.
Same reason I don’t believe 9/11 should ever become a national holiday – I don’t want Macy’s having a “Back to School 9/11″ sale the way they do with Veterans Day sales.
didn’t wonkette post something similar yesterday? – [wonkette.com]
Free soup is free soup… not that I’d wager on it being very high quality soup, but that’s another discussion.
For the record, that’s very far on the tacky side of the line. Deeply poetic my behind. How else are they gonna get people in there??
The only thing worse that this promotion is someone taking advantage of it.
+ Watch video
I think Olbermann is arrogant, but he’s right. 9/11 is a trademark, its a “brand” now- something that is managed and promoted, used offensively or defensively like any other brand.
@ARP: Good ol’ Olbermann. Those Republican’s will be shoving 9/11 down our throats for years, as if they were the only heroes to emerge from it. I hope people really think about what the RNC truly did with that video.
@UniComp: Funny the only people I noticed introducing politics onto 9/11 are angry liberals.
@Copperplum: …. sputter sputter… cough cough …
@Copperplum: I sure wish I’d read what you said a second ago. Way to go there!
you complain about free soup?
NO SOUP FOR YOU!
9/11 NEVER FORGET…the oyster crackers.
I believe its Shoneys offering the free bowl of soup not Econolodge
I think this is evidence that we’ve come to the point of “Meh, it’s 9-11 huh. We should do something.”
I agree with the poetic bit, because free soup is just like the kinds of things that businesses in downtown NYC were offering to first responders, everything from free coffee to free massages.
Free soup comes at a price!
Give it on up to Tawdryville!
Can I get a side of Freedom Fries with that?
I vote for tacky. I think this kind of marketing, such as it is, turns more people off than it attracts.
Free soup isn’t free
It costs folks like you and me
And if we don’t all chip in
We’ll never pay that bill
Ohhh, buck-oh-five
Free soup costs a buck-oh…..fiiiive.
klassy…
no one seems to remember the 1993 world trade center bombing
The 1993 attack didn’t kill anywhere near the number of people, or for that matter anywhere near the number of people that the rightwing attack in Oklahoma City did. And of course there was some feeling of closure with those bombings since Clinton didn’t call off the search for the bombers, instead urging his people to capture, try, and convict them, which they did.
I feel compelled to call foul on this one. I just can’t accept that some manager would be so shallow as to put this up on their signboard. It’s gotta be Photoshopped.
… omg, did I really just say that there can’t be people this shallow?
Nobody here seems to care what KIND of soup it is. Is it a dirty hippie vegetable soup, all American Beef ‘n’ Barley or some commie cream of mushroom. AND what the hell do we get for Pearl Harbor day!?
Never forget,… that terrorism creates jobs.
@AgentTuttle:
“Never forget,… that terrorism creates jobs.”
Except this year.
I bet its on the west coat…..911 to them wasn’t as big a deal as those closer by the attacks
@Carbonic: And Pearl Harbor affected those in L.A. more than New Yorkers, right?
My vote: deeply poetic. Soup = comfort food. Manager who offers free comfort food to memorialize national tragedy = not shallow. People who look at someone else’s memorial with disapproval = judgementally suspicious. What memorials did you have? Any? Doesn’t have to be federally mandated as a holiday to memorialize it personally or even with your business.
@Carbonic: People who think 9-11 didn’t affect people if they were all the way over on the West Coast forget (or never even bothered to consider?) that people from all over the country were passengers on those planes, and that people all over the country had family members – sons and daughters and parents – who worked and died in the towers.
Faith in humanity – you’re doing it wrong.
@alphafemale: okay, so that explains the soup, but I don’t get how a medium order of fries at Burger King works into this – [wonkette.com]
@camille_javal: You’d have to ask the owner (or owners) of those particular Burger King locations why they offered free fries to “honor fallen heros”. At least the locations are given, so we could ask if we wanted to. Maybe the owner has a son who is a firefighter and lurves fries?
I was mostly bothered by assumption that the sketch of teh jesus welcoming the victims to him was somehow saying that jesus was the destroyer? I saw it only as someone hoping that all those who lost their lives found jesus waiting for them. (if they believe those jesusy sort of tales)
When to doubt your fellow man:
When they say:
I have a puppy in my van, cute little kiddy, would you like to see it?
I can send you a lot of money,but first you need to send me just a little money.
We don’t need to use that condom, I’m clean and/or sterile.
Not when they say:
Remember When by having some free soup.
What are the motives? We don’t know what they are. A lot of assumptions have been made, and this sign has now made the inter-rounds, with those assumptions never having been proven whatsoever.
This free bowl of soup isn’t hurting me. It isn’t trying to hurt my family or steal from me. It costs me nothing, I run absolutely no risk if I choose to have “faith in humanity” in regards to the motives for offering free soup.
In comparison, I run a great risk if I choose to have “faith in humanity” when it comes to situations like the ones I listed above. Big difference. Sure, sure, I know the arguments, – corporate greed, hook ‘em with free soup and then our customers will buy dinner too, and we’ll use 9-11 as the perfect feel-good bait, even the “oh you can’t just go around trusting people” gestalt view of the thing, but still, as long as they aren’t poisoned, I think giving out free bowls of soup is an ok thing to do.
Someone said “how else are they gonna get people in there”… we all know that nobody eats at Shoney’s because they want to, people eat at Shoney’s because they are staying in hotels next to Shoney’s and they don’t know where any other restaurant is. Nobody is pushed over the edge from rational thought into the decision to eat at Shoney’s just because they are offered free soup.
If evidence comes forward that makes it seem more likely that the free soup offer is “shallow” or nothing more than a gimmick, then I’ll start booing Shoney’s plenty loud. But until then, I’m going to think the best and save my anger for the political sphere, where people use 9-11 for far more nefarious gain than a little extra business during the lunch rush.
Let’s start a movement, free soup for all from every restaurant every 9-11 so that we may feel a little comfort, and remember to offer comfort to our fellow humans.
@Carbonic:
What an asinine thing to say.
@Carbonic: That argument falls apart since all 4 planes were headed to San Francisco or LA.
@Carbonic:
Gonna have to do better than that, sonny. There ARE no Shoney’s on the west coast.
@Carbonic:
That has got to be one of the most uneducated things I have ever seen on this site. I live in the Western US and had friends in DC at the time of the attack. I knew people who responded to the Pentagon. I helped my son’s Godmother track down her Uncle who was a pilot for one of the airlines. My in-laws are air traffic and where on duty when the order to ground all airplanes came down, so it did have a profound impact on my life, and many people I know. Your comment was pointless, tasteless, and even at the risk of getting lectured about the comment code, you are an unbelievable ass.
Hey people, it’s the thought that counts…
I’m just not sure what they were thinking.
Nothing says “commemorate a national tragedy” like a free bowl of soup. Now say…had it been a coffee and a danish, they might of had something. (No, I’m kidding..the whole idea is just plain stupid).
I think a better gesture would have been to donate a sum of money to a memorial fund. And do so quietly, without fanfare.
re: the added note above – Is it known what city this is in, and if this soup offer was corporate sponsored or was offered by local management? Shoney’s only goes as far west as New Mexico, so I assume it’s not on the West Coast
You want freedom fries with that order?
you think this is bad? hasn’t anyone seen these commercials? –>
perhaps the manager’s desire to do something is a little misguided, but this “commemorative 9+11=20 dollar bill” crap? i won’t say what i’d like done with the assholes behind that.
@mac-phisto: Seen that a bunch, I love how they tell us “this will never be released for circulation” as if that is a good thing and somehow makes it valuable. Yeah, no shit it’s not going to be in circulation, because it’s not actual money or affiliated with the U.S. mint in any way…
Again I blame the television networks who continue to sell air time to any scammer with the right amount of money.
@mac-phisto: I guess I haven’t been staying awake to watch the late, late, late movie. Of course, these days, I don’t watch anything in real time; so I FF through the commercials. But I don’t recall even seeing this zip through.
And you are correct: that commercial is despicable.
And @alphafemale: +1 to your comments.
@mac-phisto: How can it be “struck” in .999 silver leaf? (probably copper inside)
The last thing we need is for 9/11 to be “free soup day.”
I’m gonna guess it’s not French onion they were offering…
(Seriously, though, I have good friends in France; they’re just not from Paris. That’s the key.)
Hate to give benefit of the doubt, but could it be two separate thoughts. Like, In memory of 9/11. Free bowl of soup. Two thoughts, not related but since punctuation isn’t used it’s hard to separate them.
@coddat: Yes, you might be right. This is much how like Culvers always means to put stuff like “Double ButterBurger” and “Brownie Ice Cream” on their signs, but they just smush them together so it looks like “Double ButterBurger Brownie Ice Cream”…yuck.
How about free soup for the OKC bombing in 1995?
If this is Sam Wilkinson’s picture, why does it have a Consumerist watermark on it?
A couple of pancakes with a bush of parsley sitting on top would be more appropriate.
I thought that darn sign looked familiar. There can’t be many more Shoney’s in the parking lots of Econolodges.
Later,
Chrome…
@Chrome: except every Shoney’s I’ve ever seen, ever.
I’ve lived about 1/2-mile away from that particular Shoney’s for 5 years. I’ve never been to it and I don’t know of anybody else who ever goes there either.
They seem to prey on naive out-of-towners visiting the West Virginia University campus. My guess would be they were just desperate for some additional business.
Hmm. Tastes like freedom!
The place I work at gave out free cookies in “Commemoration of 9/11″.
Nothing honors lives lost like baked goods.
@NPGeek:
Better than giving out baked goods in memory of the Holocaust…just saying.
I think it was a kind gesture and not tacky in any way. Golden Corral gives vets free food on Veterans Day and how is that “shallow”?! I sure didn’t see anyone else offering something in memory of it.
Perhaps riffing off of ironchef‘s post –
At least it’s not “In memory of 9/11, free bowl of soup — with every $3.99 purchase of FREEDOM FRIES.”