Monday February 06, 2012

AD NAUSEAM. Must be a slow day at The Corner. Here's Christian Schneider going deep on a fucking car commercial:

But in Wisconsin, where the entire state is still grieving over the Packers’ loss to the Giants three weeks ago, the reaction was much different. While most cheeseheads saw the Super Bowl as a rare night off from the sucking hole of union politics, there it was in the ad — an image of the state capitol occupation by union protesters nearly a year ago.

How could you force Wisconsin to endure five seconds of a protest scene made generic by the removal of union signs? Don't you know how they've suffered?

Also, Eastwood accompanied a generic scene of division with a generic plea for unity. To normal human beings, this is advertising, but to Schneider this is injustice. Because division isn't what's bad -- it's unions!

Of course, the “division, discord, and blame,” in Wisconsin began when unions tried the burn the state down over Governor Scott Walker’s plan requiring them to begin paying into their own pension accounts... 

Everyone knows the results. Union protesters calling the Lieutenant Governor a “f***ing whore” to her husband’s face after a Walker speech. Screeching demonstrators being dragged out while attempting to disrupt Walker’s State of the State address. WWII veterans being greeted with Nazi salutes at a capitol Christmas-tree-lighting ceremony. Protesters disrupting a Walker-led ceremony for Special Olympics award recipients. Forged recall petition signatures. Lawmakers having beers dumped on their heads. The list goes on and on.

Wow, swearing and beer-dumping. It's a wonder no one called out the National Guard. Oh wait...

According to Chrysler, these are times when we just “didn’t understand each other,” and where both sides can be ascribed “blame.” In fact, it was the union protesters that understood perfectly — that their boorish behavior would probably one day land them in an ad lauding their activism.

Clint  Eastwood occasionally got on the wireless and rasped to the union thugs, "You boys ain't cuttin' the mustard. Now I wanna see some boorishness and I want to see it now. No beer-bath, no TV! I'm not doing this because I want to take long showers with you assholes..."

I'm going over to the Times. Surely Douthat must be explaining by now how the Fiat ad is weakening America by something something sex.

UPDATE. Schneider's colleague Charles C.W. Cooke leaps in with the Goldbergian Unity is Slavery angle:

The commercial’s theme was more closely informed by Barack Obama’s recent SOTU call for the country to put aside its differences and march to the president’s tune than by the rugged individualism that one usually associates with the star who played Dirty Harry and The Man with No Name. It was full of injunctions to “all pull together” and calls to “rally around what [is] right and act as one,” which are fine if one wishes to storm the beaches of Iwo Jima, but are the death knell of a healthy democratic culture.

A car commercial. It's a car commercial. I --

Oh to hell with it. If you showed this guy the Mean Joe Green Coke ad he'd probably interpret it as propaganda for a radical redistribution of Pittsburgh Steelers jerseys.