So many of my friends have commented on social media about
what Clint said in the two-minute Chrysler ad that ran during the Super
Bowl. Every talking head in the
shout-radio and hate-TV realm took the bait and whined about it, from Karl Rove
(you knew he’d hate it) to Charlie Sykes.
Like many of my friends, after the ad ran, my wife and I
looked at each other and said, nearly simultaneously, “back it up and let’s
watch it again”. So we put the DVR in
reverse and paid close attention to the replay.
We saw the footage of the demonstrations in Madison a year ago, footage
which was properly licensed and sanitized by Chrysler to remove the Madison
Teachers Inc. logos. Footage which
prompted a lot of people to incorrectly Tweet that it wasn’t the real thing. We listened to what Clint said.
We didn’t see it at all as an ad for President Obama. But it was easy to figure that blowhards like
Rush and Rove would. We saw it as a
message that said great things can happen when we work together, and it’s time
for us to stop being a nation divided and come together to solve our problems,
not the least of which is to put people back to work.
The spouse of one of my friends saw the ad the same way, and
later made some interesting comments on his wife’s blog. He wrote “ I refuse to be defined by radio
and tv political talking heads, and it’s time for all of us to ignore them. I
am not at war with the teachers of my children, my state’s Governor, unions,
General Motors, big banks, Planned Parenthood, Komen for the Cure,
conservatives, liberals, recallers, tea partiers, or frankly anyone with whom I
might disagree on some political issue of the day. I am on the same team as
Clint, Barack, Scott, Herb, Nancy, Mitt, and even Tommy. We are Americans, and
it is time to lick our wounds, perhaps revise our strategy a little, and come
out for the second half determined to give it our all as one team. We can still
win this one.”
Couldn’t have said it better myself, Pete.
We missed this ad the first time around because we were watching the Puppy Bowl at halftime. But we saw so much about it on Twitter during the second half that we went out and found it online.
ReplyDeleteIt strikes me that a reason conservatives hate the ad so much is that they look at the world as a zero-sum game: if somebody else gets theirs, I'm not getting as much of mine. The concept of the common good is entirely foreign to them now. Further, they accomplish this by sowing division and encouraging fear of "the other"--the precise opposite of "we're all in this together
It's too bad that Clint is so old. He could be president. He's conservative, but not the mean-spirited variety who infest the GOP these days.
ReplyDelete