As one of the first to call the Chrysler Clint Eastwood commercial from last night’s Super Bowl a “political ad” — for a moment I felt like the brouhaha over it was partly my fault. Well, until the political hacks weighed in and I realized they were living in a fantasy world. More »
George Washington drove a Dodge Challenger for cristsakes!!! You can’t get any more patriotic than that.
lenzy1000
Know what? Seconded. By a long time hard core hippie hating conservative.
bigmoosen
I wish it were an error, in the sense of something unintentional, but I’m doubting that.
Just noticed I had a wayward letter ‘T’ in that post to which you responded. And then I left out a ‘t’ nearby. What the? Darn.
Skink
Seriously, if the economy suddenly took a sudden upswing and unemployment dropped, Fox news would run a story asking whether the economy was biased toward Obama.
neMouse
Highest concentration of domestic product for two years running…don’t feed the trolls.
BLVC25
Camry’s a fairly American car… not trolling
Mikey (builds Beige)
I thought Ford didn’t take our money, even if they were originally asking for the bailout?
Mikey (builds Beige)
At first I read “billions of dollars of tax paper money,” then realized I read it incorrectly, then realized it didn’t really matter.
Mikey (builds Beige)
Glad someone else noticed the error in the “we all pulled together” statement.
Mikey (builds Beige)
As an unabashed conservative, I agree wholeheartedly. I do take issue somewhat with parts of the financial bailout, and nearly all of TARP (shovel-ready jobs, my ass. even the crown prince himself has joked about it), but the sheer number of jobs on the line in the automotive industry certainly warranted bailing them out. Doesn’t hurt that the carmakers are actually paying back a good bit of that money, either. Can the same be said of the financial industry? Or any of the president’s pet (green) projects? Negative, ghostrider.
grantman321
+1
grantman321
Yeah, I really like that GTO that Pontiac had, the Ford Transit is pretty cool, and the new Camry makes you proud don’t it?…just trolling.
BLVC25
I didn’t think it was helping one party or another, but I also didn’t think it was what anyone wanted to hear right now. Nobody is in the mood for kumbya and hand-holding. We’re about to have the most divisive, nasty and consequential election in history, and everyone is sharpening their knives.
When the dust of the 2012 election settles, then maybe. Depends on who wins.
Admiral_Awesome
he wasn’t pro-life, pro-freedom, pro-democracy, for smaller government, nor for the right to bear arms.
Alex
^ This guy Agrees.
IriShane
I love what’s going on with American car companies now. They’re doing exactly what they should be: making us feel patriotic about American cars. It should make you feel patriotic to pick up a new American car. Also, I’m very glad about the current heated rivalry between Chevy and Ford, which in the past brought out cars like the original Camaro and Mustang. It’s a win-win for us.
American cars are making a comeback.
yourunclejim
SEAL Team 6 has got to be the Navy’s codename for Chuck Norris in that case, since he would be the only one to tame Eastwood’s rage.
IriShane
Um, yeah he was.
BullittFan_Fords4Life
I sense a shared theme with your comment and user name, but I just cannot put my finger on it…
BullittFan_Fords4Life
Well, I’ll take rosy optimism over this ‘America cannot survive four more years of Obama’ bullshit attitude from the Right any day.
BullittFan_Fords4Life
Robin Williams?
BullittFan_Fords4Life
Little known trivia: Special Forces operators from the US Navy’s SEAL Team 6 did not actually kill Osama Bin Laden last May.
It was really just Clint Eastwood and his fists. The SEALs were only sent along to make sure his natural badass-ness didn’t get out of hand so as to alert the Pakistani’s to their presence.
BullittFan_Fords4Life
Every advertisement is about emotion whether is a flag waving girl or patriotism.
Beyond that, here our country is so polarized by Fox news/ George Bush II, Karl Rove and hatred of a colored person in the white house that even a mundane patriotic ad is seen as partisan threat.
benmlee
I think it’s the lack of any lips. There’s just a slit where his mouth is.
Raisin, mummy, zombie – they’re all dehydrated. I think Clint should start advertising Gatorade, he’d be perfect for a before/after shoot…
Hepcat_AU
The news outlets need to read this and move on.
I would consider myself pretty dang liberal and yet I have been raised in a military household. The only thing that ad did for me was make me feel patriotic. People need to stop reading into shit that wasn’t said.
Now, back to the cars.
/muricah
Enginerrrrrrrrr
The only thing this commercial is “pro” is pro-being-fucking-kickass. Seriously. I/You/Chrysler/GM have been knocked down but we’re not out. They think we’re goners but we’ve got the second half to show them just how wrong they are. SO SHINE ON YOU CRAZY DIAMOND.
promoted by promoted by, is that all you people care about?
To paraphrase John Galt, what the politicians of all stripes need to do to get this country on the path to a comeback is, “Get the hell out of the way.”
Go Mr. Eastwood! Sir!
BTW, it’ll be a cold day in hell when I buy a new car, so no, the “Buy American Cars” thing doesn’t work on me. But I loved the sentiment behind the ad.
thunder
You must be new here and I am trying to be more polite and turn a a new leaf.
But you sir, are a fucking moron.
If driving in a V8 is demonstrating masculinity then what does driving in a V12 represent? Telling the world that your cock is the size of the empire state building?
Saving Chrysler was never viewed as socialism or communism or whatever other ‘ism’ idiots out there have.
It was about not only saving American jobs, quite a lot of them, but all the jobs around the world that would have been affected. Chrysler is a global company. They have distributors and suppliers that depend on them being around and in turn those companies have employees that work off the sole reason that Chrysler makes cars. Take any one of the Detroit 3 away and watch how FUCKED the rest of the auto industry will get whether temporarily or long term.
If GM, Ford and Chrysler had not taken our money they would have stared down certain bankruptcy and failure (GM and Chrysler) and Ford would have been severely fucked to say the least. The shockwaves would have ruined multiple companies and cost tens of thousands of jobs.
Fuck the Republicans and Democrats on this issue – jobs needed saving and we were in a position to spare the 3 from being royally fucked and all those employees from becoming jobless and in turn decreasing the amount of people actually paying taxes at all.
AJ
Karl Rove offended ? His very existense offends me. – This ad was about sending a much needed inspirational and positive message to the whole country, more than it was about just selling a car. It literaly gave me the chills. To those of you who think it was not worth it to help GM and Chrysler from becoming extinct, you have not even a clue how devastating that would be to the present , and future economic well being of this country. You multiply the taxes paid by the people who’s jobs were saved, and add to that the money not spent on unemployment compensation for the same folks, and I doubt it would take long to make up the difference spent on the bailout.
zebra427
I didn’t see it as political, but apolitically patriotic. As a military member, I’m pretty intimately familiar with patriotism without politics. It didn’t cross the “mawkishly patriotic” flag-waving bullshit that so many people do.
hawkeye18
Nicely said Ray. Jon Stewart would be proud.
Dawgvet06
… Or a father’s praise.
ponytuner
And what is that, hearing bullshit feel-good platitudes while not taking any stands or doing anything?
racer-esq.
Dear Ming,
This ad follows the age old car ad appeal to patriotism, or at least a new age kind of collectivist patriotism without the icky, jingoistic, trite flag-waving that elicits eye-rolling by a First Lady. “We all pulled together”. This is a car ad that has the temerity to literally snarl at you for daring to think you ever opposed a bailout of Chrysler. Get with the program. Conform. Buy a Chrysler.
Skink
None of this would have happened if they didn’t close down the Cocaine Factory.
PanchoVilleneuve: model citizen, zero discipline
Yes it is. I invested in Fiat for my high school marketing class’ stock market simulation. I lost money, too.
D
And there’s how the current Focus was developed in conjunction with Mazda, the Cruze is Korean and the Dart is Italian. But whatevs. Head up my sandy ass.
PanchoVilleneuve: model citizen, zero discipline
Just going to throw my opinion out there. I liked the commercial. Will I buy a Chrysler product? Nope. A generation before me had issues with a A727 transmission and it’s been ground into my brain to never buy a Dodge/Chryco product again. Companies try to push that loyalty “runs deep,” but a fathers rage runs deeper.
anthonycae
Brav-fucking-o Mr.Wert! I’m glad to see someone in the journalism world has a brain, and might just be unbiased as well. Dare I say, but might you be an independent; able to make up your own mind on the issues, instead of drinking the Kool-Aid of one ridged side or the other?
godfathercorvette
Only *partisan* idiots would be offended by an ad that celebrates American revitalization. Given that only one party is openly threatened by a revitalized American auto industry, economic optimism and a resurgent job market, it’s getting awfully hard to see the current iteration of the GOP as anything but complete idiots.
And before the flamethrower is lit — I was a long-time Republican (up until they went completely idiotic). Sorry for the division, Clint.
Kuro
Easy Rider was the first and last time anyone thought riding a hardtail across country was a good idea.
Party-vi
The Caliber was totally just as good as the imported compacts! As was that Focus they kept selling us for over a decade and you’d be A TOTAL MORON to buy, say, a Civic over a Cobalt.
PanchoVilleneuve: model citizen, zero discipline
Search for “U.S. loses $1.3 billion in exiting Chrysler”, a July 21, 2011 article on cnnmoney.
Noreaster
Yeah, and you kept buying them because your head is in the sand or up your own arse. That shit hasnt been true for 10 years, and more in some cases. And toyota and honda have done NOTHING the past couple years.
Mr.CardHolder and Mr.Doe
Well, this is the equivalent of two +1s in one day for you. Mandatory heart click.
rad_mike
I think these guys might take issue with that.
BtheD19, V4 power FTW
If you think this commercial is about anything other than using cinematography and a raspy voice to manipulate people’s emotions to get them to buy cars made in Canada by an Italian company that Clint Eastwood would have preferred liquidated then you are an idiot.
racer-esq.
Hi, Ray, how’s it going. Wait, you’re not Ray!
PanchoVilleneuve: model citizen, zero discipline
Congratulations to all the brain surgeons who figured out that this was just an ad aimed to sell more cars. Have a cookie.
For everyone else who realizes that this fantastic ad transcended the traditional advertisement paradigm (intentional or not) and spoke to something that every American is concerned about, I applaud you.
ming
you ride a motorcycle YOUR ARGUMENT IS INVALID!
#Murica
Party-vi
Well said. Except that instead of the rich kid with the trust fund, I think Chrysler is more like that perfectly able person shamelessly living off of government assistance. Making no real effort to give anything back, because well, they don’t have to.
MadMechanic
I think Ray aims to be a journalist.
Bumblebee
Thank you.
Marketing. No more. No less.
rad_mike
Or, to put it a third way: If the political hacks are demonstrating the precise divisiveness that Eastwood warns against in the ad, and you are being similarly divisive by calling those people idiots, how is your point different from the hacks, or valid? Just because you don’t align yourself with a party doesn’t mean you’re not bludgeoning us with your own politics.
Maybe you meant this article to be purely ironic?
Bumblebee
Oooh group hug!
Anyway, yeah I didn’t find it as a political ad. I felt more like it was a “Stop bitching, pull yourself up by your boot straps or I’m gonna punch you in the mouth” type of thing. Only cause Mr. Eastwood is good at the ol’ slug in the kisser bit.
WarShrike
How dumb do politicians think the American people are. I did not see any politics in this ad. All I saw and heard was “get up off your cry baby ass and lets fix this country the good ole American way, with blood, sweat, and tears”. Thank you political polarization you are going to be the end of America with your ideology.
huskdoc
By someone you mean the Germans? They are too big to bail out!
gmporschenut
So, uh, in case you haven’t noticed it’s election season. Isn’t it obvious that pundits are going to construe the meaning of the ad in every possible way. The bull moose is during the rut as the pundit is during election season; insane. I’ve been flipping back and forth between FNC and MSNBC, and I’ll tell you what is idiotic; calling the ad anything but fucking awesome. As far as I’m concerned Karl Rove can kiss my ass. I don’t care whether or not Democrats or Republicans are claiming the ad to be pro-Anything, though I’ve seen only a few instances of it, at the very least the Democrats pretty universally found the ad inspiring. And my was it inspiring.
Xenoxus
Speak for yourself. The piercing eyes… the pouting lips… Ray’s like Anderson Cooper in a prayer shawl. And when I found out he likes old(er) guys [jalopnik.com] …oh, be still my restless heart…
doug-g
Well, it’s not that simple. As I recall, Fiat only owns a controlling interest.
[www.torquenews.com]
BtheD19, V4 power FTW
You’re so funny Sergio!
Kukuti
*Gasp* You guys thought it was a political ad? Oh my!
Kukuti
Without claiming any political affiliation, myself. I think that the people in American politics (and the American people themselves) seem to have forgotten that they’re working for all Americans. Not just their supporters. Not just the people who’ve financially supported them. Not just their friends.
All Americans are represented by the potiticians in office whether our political parties believe it or not. You may not have voted for the current president but he is the President of the United States.
v8corvairpickup
Can’t we accept it for what it really is — MARKETING
It’s supposed to make Chrysler look good so that people will buy their products.
HeadTater
Fiat is publicly traded, right ?
Kate’s Dirty Sister
Yes, bailing Chrysler out amounted to (admittedly partial) nationalisation. I note how well that worked out for the British motor industry in the ’70s along with its ramifications into the following decades to current. Good job, Labour Party.
However, while this registered Republican may not currently drive something with a hemi-head engine, I’ve owned several in the past. As far as I can recall, most were Peugeots and none have been American. You’ll have to pardon my clear disregard for living up to the stereotype of my political affiliation, but I do hope that this has answered your questions satisfactorily.
kar120c
You are goddamn right.
Party-vi
I think people are missing the message. It wasn’t aimed left or right. Its was something we should be hearing from our leadership, not a Hollywood (albeit a badass one) actor. Sure, a lot of stuff sucks in this country right now, but the underlying message is the same. Pick ourselves up by our boot straps, dust ourselves off, learn and move forward. This applies to Detroit. That city has had to struggle, and adapt. It has had to reinvent its self and is on my list of travel spots. It has a flourishing youth and arts culture. Its still the home of the big three, Ford which has some of the best product in 40 plus years and some really great cars, Chrysler who has some equally great cars and has made significant gains in sales and profits, and GM who, well, rolled the dice on the Volt which at this point I will call a failure, has the Zr1, the new Camaro, and a promising looking new Colorado and Silverado coming out.
FixUbimmer
The last time we did that, we ended up with the TC by Maserati. Granted, it was still better than what happened with ze Germans running the show.
Sir Sonoma
It doesn’t. His narrative is fiction.
Skink
He’s more of a golden raisin with an angry face drawn on it.
PanchoVilleneuve: model citizen, zero discipline
He does.
Notice that in the Chevy apocalypse ad, only the Ford drivers are said to be killed off.
The Dodge/Ram drivers are waiting for the Chevy drivers to become complacent; then they will strike, led by Clint Eastwood and George Washington driving his Dodge Challenger from the 2010 World Cup commercial.
Baja Bug and Volvo
Well, sort of. Chrysler isn’t publicly traded. They still want to make money and they still have shareholders, sort of, but because they’re an LLC it’s a bit different. Right now they’re still working on simpler terms: sell cars, don’t die. Shareholder profits will come later. Heck, even Ford just paid its first dividend in years.
BtheD19, V4 power FTW
Ray’s trying to keep it sacred.
Baja Bug and Volvo
That was a big +1 response regardless of which side of the aisle you sit on.
doug-g
But how does that fit into wkiernan’s narrative?
Baja Bug and Volvo
Ignoring the politics here…. but does anyone else think Clint looks like a mummified ancient Mayan?
Hepcat_AU
Get off my lawn.
dontloseyourdinosaur
Only an idiot would drive something with a Hemi, right?
Nice Pipe Or Crack Pipe: Barack Obama’s Hemi-Powered 300C For $100,000?
Baja Bug and Volvo
Bah, he’s real man who can handle a bit name calling from a cunt like me, just don’t touch his fucking Torino.
LandofMinos: Born with a steering wheel in his hand… and lead in his foot. He is, the Nightrider… cruising at the speed of fright!
Won’t work for her. Everybody knows that she’s already spoken for.
Klaus
Bush didn’t sign THE bailout. He signed off on stopgap life support funding to enable Obama to do what Obama wanted to do once Obama got into office and could arrange for a definitive bailout. Bush was being deferential to Obama’s intentions.
Skink
I dunno, it’s kinda close…
CeRuLeaNBLu – Defines the Light
Yes, damn those political parties who were the CEOs of GM and Chrysler and ran them into the ground just to kill off the unions, then got elected to Washington, and passed the first bailout to save them! Cunning plan! Pass me a tinfoil hat.
BtheD19, V4 power FTW
Too bad common sense isn’t actually common.
Andy Wallwhore
I wish someone would give the Italians some credit.
Baja Bug and Volvo
If that doesn’t work, go with cleavage. Unfortunately for Obama though, he’s rather flat.
Baja Bug and Volvo
How many Republicans out there 1) think saving Chrysler was socialism and 2) demonstrate their masculinity by driving something with a Hemi?
gzuckier
“When in the trenches of a political war, just throw some poop at your opponents in case it might stick!”
Klaus
Klaus
Wait, we “lost” money on the Chrysler loan? What, the interest rate wasn’t high enough when it was paid back in full?
phoenix_AE
Hey, rah rah America! A bunch of their cars are built here by people who pay taxes here. The dealerships employ people here. Mechanics work on the vehicles here. There is a lot more to a company’s identity than who the majority stockholder is in a company.
dontloseyourdinosaur
The “party [that] didn’t let that happen” must be the Republicans, as President George W. Bush signed the bailout for Chrysler back in December 2008.
Baja Bug and Volvo
The question is simply how far you read into it. If you take the commercial purely at its words and those alone, then you’re correct – there’s nothing inherent to the commercial that takes any political position at all.
However, it doesn’t stand on its own. People know what happened with Chrysler, like it did GM. It was going to fall apart entirely until the government stepped in with billions of dollars of tax payer money, some very creative political and legal strategies, and propped up the company (or, technically, buried the old companies, their debt, and billions of US tax payer dollars, but hey who’s counting).
If you know that background context – and certainly most of us do – then the script of the commercial rings pretty damn hollow. It’s like listening to the rich kid with the trust fund talking about hard work and what it takes to survive. The words aren’t wrong, they just don’t carry any meaning.
BtheD19, V4 power FTW
The Supreme court would probably end up deeming it constitutional as “universal” healthcare was never meant to force people to have government run health care. The original bill drafted by the Dems (you did get that part right) said that there would be a public option as well as options for people to purchase their own health care through other providers. Then the Reps cut the bill down to the point where it is absolutely useless and blame the Dems for creating a waste of a bill.
I see no reason why, if there is a public option paid for through taxes, requiring everyone to have health care is a bad idea. The healthier people are, the less money is spent in the long run. Too many people cannot or refuse to see this.
dontloseyourdinosaur
But the tone of the ad was rah-rah America. Just ignore the little Italian guy pulling the strings.
Triborough
I want to kiss him on the mouth.
PanchoVilleneuve: model citizen, zero discipline
I’ll just leave this here.
twinturbo2
Unlike Nikola Tesla, I love you in that way.
Baja Bug and Volvo
I’m not buying it. The fact is that one party eagerly wanted to smash the labor unions, bankrupt Detroit’s automobile industry, and put an additional million people out of work, in the darkest depth of the worst American recession since the Great Depression. The other party didn’t let that happen; and so that first party has been complaining about it non-stop ever since. No amount of “post-partisan” blather can change that fact.
wkiernan
Just because Fiat recently bought up most of Chrysler doesn’t mean that the company as an entity is Italian or now foreign in some way. I don’t see any Italians driving a Jeep SRT8, except for the Ferrari Formula 1 team.
dontloseyourdinosaur
We all love you.
No, not that way.
Nikola Tesla
Just 24 hours ago, Mr. Wert declared iTt a political ad. Now, he ells us, doncha dare call it pro-Obama.
Chrysler, as it stands today, is a political creature, reborn of politics and political dealmaking. Chrysler’s feel-good pep talk half time ad is little more than historical revisionism: “…we all pulled together..”. Fatuous, mawkish horsefeathers. If you’re going to do historical revisionism on a grand scale, two minutes and several million dollars featuring a living, breathing American icon during the Super Bowl’s halftime is a great way to start.
Skink
You, sir, have balls of steel if you are calling Clint Eastwood “some cunt”.
dontloseyourdinosaur
Agreed. Chrysler does not buy ad time unless they think it gets them more car sales. And they would never be so stupid to take a pro-republican or pro-democrat side, because that automatically loses them car sales. This is merely patriotism as an advertising tool, just like they have been doing in a large amount of their other ads.
J. Walter Weatherman
I love you.
nibby4WD
Dammit. Someone keeps spilling politics in my car blog.
Is nothing sacred?
stevezilla
What’s the purpose? When you look around the room and can’t identify the sucker, it’s you.
snapoversteer is powered by Solyndra
I think it was more effective than just blatantly pushing their cars and trucks. It was subtle and the part at the end with the appearing logos was the only “advertising” the commercial did. It hit home with a lot of people because they feel the same way.
I honestly thought that it was going to be an ad for all of the Big 3 until I only noticed Chrysler cars.
dontloseyourdinosaur
Bumblebee-
You do know that a blog is basically a Livejournal that people take seriously, right? Just making sure.
PanchoVilleneuve: model citizen, zero discipline
More joking than actually believing that.
Ray Wert
They’d be entitled to their opinions of course. They’d be wrong, but absolutely entitled to those opinions.
Ray Wert
…so all this is Wert’s fault?
Daaayyyyy-ummmmmmm!!
The MSM reads Wert’s journalistic prose… that’s as much of a stretch as Madonna’s corset yesterday -
HiramJahoovafat
See, the problem with President Obama is he’s been TOO rosy in his outlook — not recognizing we still have hardships to face.
Ray Wert
It was a political ad supporting what America truly needs — common fucking sense and a positive outlook on the future.
That, of all things. The lack of common sense is getting out of hand; and never ceases to dumbfound me.
SoftRock
It is a very strange ad, to say the least. Name the last time any company spent $7 million on an ad that didn’t mention their product. So what’s the purpose? Hard to tell. Why do it? Maybe for the comedy of watching the left and the right freak out. I think that’s worth $7 million.
Charles Moseley
I never thought of it as a political ad, but thought the Obama administration might try to make it that way. I can’t see Eastwood making a case for either party anyway, but I thought the commercial was inspiring and honest, as Eastwood comes across. Matt Lauer didn’t even know it was a Chrysler ad, but thought it was more an endorsement of all of the Detroit three. Admittedly, you see only glimpses of Chryslers and the icons at the very end.
I thought it was brilliant.
Timtoolman
Totally. Look at those conservative idiots who wouldn’t even discuss the unconstitutionality of a health care law that is now deemed unconstitutional. What idiots!
Those were conservatives who made that law, right? I don’t have that backwards or anything, do I?
Bumblebee
I don’t think he was a conservative…..
Alex
Ray-
Sorry: Did you just quote yourself in your own article? And by doing so, attempt to show your superior sense of perspective to David Axelrod, Karl Rove, and anyone who agrees with them? And did you try to demonstrate that superior perspective by describing your point of view on the purely subjective issue of interpreting a TV advertisement?
Put another way, do you have in your kitchen a pot and a kettle that are both black? What would you think if one disdainfully called the other “black?”
Bumblebee
Patriotism is only a pretext.
The only goal of this ad is to sell more cars and satisfy shareholders.
It’s not pro-republican, pro-democrat or pro-america.
It’s only about business, trying to sell more cars and making more money by making you believe they care about you.
Kate’s Dirty Sister
I couldn’t agree with y’all more! I can’t stand it when someone is buying a car and settles for a craptastic one just because it is made in America. People think that they are helping the economy by buying american but what these people don’t realize is that unless people don’t buy a craptastic car then automakers will keep on making craptastic cars just because people will buy them out of blind patriotism. I do have to say though GM and Ford have really been stepping up their game recently, Ford with the new focus ST and the new fusion. GM with the sonic and the ATS.
Alex
“It’s halftime. Both teams are in their locker room discussing what they can do to win this game in the second half.”
Even this frostbitten Canadian Boy can figure that line out. If the politicians in America cannot, we are all Fucked!
LoveMy5.0
I only think of one President when I think of Mopar.
Baja Bug and Volvo
I couldn’t agree with you more. I hate the fact that I can’t import myself a ’98 Mini Cooper S Sport Pack or hell, even the VM Motori diesel drivetrain that powers my beloved Wrangler in Europe…hey Washington, how about a nice dose of DEREGULATION and stop protecting me from myself.
WolfgangGullich
You should go talk to some of them “Occupy” morons. Might change your mind. There are some stupid people in that crowd, for sure.
Scrape
You couldn’t have said it better. I was going to post literally the same thoughts. Your first sentence sums up every thought I had when I watched the ad. It’s disgusting.
Titan
I know what you’re thinking. “Did he fire off at Democrats or Republicans?” Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement I kind of lost track myself. But being as this is Clint Eastwood, the most badass actor in the world, you’ve got to ask yourself one question: “Do I feel lucky?” Well, do ya, punk?
TrampaOnline
“…in a way that no political candidate or sitting President has yet done…”
Whoever wrote that… hasn’t been paying attention. I’m not sure how much more optimistic about America’s future this dolt thinks the current sitting President can possibly be.
TeekeeMon
Pretty sure it was 2 minutes trying to convince you that you should buy a Chrysler/Dodge/Jeep/RAM… using a ‘putting America back to work’/ economic recovery theme… you may have noticed the same theme from GE or any number of other ads on during the game. People are seeing politics where only empty marketing exists (admittedly hard to tell the two apart these days).
billwat
Yeah, unfortunately, the ad is political in some respects, but saying it is ProDem/ProRep is getting it totally wrong.
The ad just shows that by keeping the status quo, that the car industry in the USA could recover. But it hasn’t. And i don’t think it will. We keep on making the same old cookie-cutter cars and the consumerists of the USA keep buying them. There is currently no “gotcha” cars out there that break the mold. Even during the whole recession crisis, we resorted to a government program that massacred thousands of cars for little to no gain, then gave two of them a bailout, and for a little to no return on that “investment.”
We are also strangled by regulations and rules that forbid the car companies from bringing over cars that could’ve helped them survive the recession, all due to insipid little cunts who placed things wrong (Pinto), skewed test results to further their causes (Ralph Nader), and didn’t want people to have cars that they wanted (Mercedes Benz).
If the crash results are good in most of the civilized world, it damn well should be good here in the USA. If the car won’t crumple into a tin can upon crashing or give me cancer by inhaling that new car smell, then it’s okay to ship to the United States. If it has indicators, a catalytic converter, airbags, safety glass, and seatbelts, import into the United States.
I want a Ute. I want a Luxbarge. I want a City Car/Keicar. I want a Sports car. I want a Supercar. And I have every goddamn right as an American Citizen to decide how I spend my money legally and within reason.
cesariojpn
Thanks Ray, if you say it, then it actually carries some weight around here. Doesn’t matter how much we say it.
Nikola Tesla
Why, because Clint Eastwood’s a Republican?
TROLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL……….
Troll is English for Troll
I really don’t mean to be provocative, but there’s no distinction in your difference here. It got tax money by asking the government for it, and now its advertising doesn’t seek to sell cars but rather to engender patriotic feeling in the body politic, you know, just in case we have to ask them for more money. You think Karl Rove is a hack? Consider the point assumed and agreed with. You think that what he and other pundits are doing with regard to this ad isn’t valid? I’m sorry that I can’t agree with you.
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They turned to the body politic for help, not political parties.
Ray Wert
I consider this redemption for todays “distracted light” horseshit.
Even if it was trolling.
vdub_nut: Gods gift to Women, sort of.
When you stoop to profanity and ad hominem you’ve lost the argument. Especially when your ad hominem is your headline.
Skink
The big 3 need to appeal to something other than patriotism to sell cars. We didn’t start buying our Toyotas and Hondas because we forgot about how great America is and how much we love it. We started buying them because the domestic offerings were, well, awful.
PanchoVilleneuve: model citizen, zero discipline
Rule 1 of watching TV in Landie’s house: Audio mute must be activated during commercial breaks.
Effect: A peaceful lounge room. Mitigation of idiocy.
Try it for yourself. The mood of the room changes when some cunt isn’t barking audible shit in your ear.
LandofMinos: Born with a steering wheel in his hand… and lead in his foot. He is, the Nightrider… cruising at the speed of fright!
Clint Eastwood can’t say no to Italians.
Triborough
Bravo! That’s exactly what I got from this ad… It’s not the time to discuss politics and take sides, but to work hard, give it your best and keep up hope, regardless of where your beliefs are.
Too bad political parties get so caught up in the game of staying in power they forget that in the actual game of politics they have nothing but a common objective: The good of a nation.
TheBlazinAce
They turned to the government for aid, not “politics.” It was a business decision, and it’s over and done with. This ad had nothing to do with the nature of it’s business, it had everything to do trying to make Americans feel good about being American, and that maybe if that cup of pride runneth over, use some of that extra pride to buy an American car.
Captain Slow and his Flying Washing Machine
Relevance? Questionable. Accuracy? Undeniable.
D
“for a moment I felt like the brouhaha over it was partly my fault”
Self-aggrandizing much?
minjin
I still have hope that maybe, just maybe, people will start to get it. Thanks Ray.
GreenN_Gold
It was an ad for a FIAT subsidiary to try to sell cars. Buying crappy FIATChrysler cars isn’t going to save America, it is just going to give FIAT some return on their fire sale investment. It isn’t like they are going to start producing FIAT Pandas for the US market anytime soon. If they did, it would no doubt cause a spike in the sales of stripey jumpers.
Triborough
And if you think it was anything other than that, or if you think that sentiment was wrong, then you truly are an idiotic political hack — no matter what party you belong to.
I don’t understand this statement. The automakers have made every aspect of their continued existence a legitimately political issue by turning to politics for aid. The ad was an endorsement of the current state of US automaking, and whether that state is good or bad AND how it got that way are intensely political questions. We’re supposed to forget all the money we lost on Chrysler and ignore its Italian ownership and just feel good about our common sense and positive outlook? What are you saying here?
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Not all conservatives are idiots; far from it. But ALL idiots are conservative.
Steve S
Clint Eastwood is awesome.
Shamoononon drives like a farmer
#POTY
That means Post of the year.
Captain Slow and his Flying Washing Machine
Hear Hear! Until these idiots stop taking sides with their equally corrupt party affiliations and start putting America and it’s citizens first, we can never move forward.
sunfitness
There are no stupid questions, just a lot of inquisitive idiots.
zymerth