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The Spectacle Blog
As I wrote here shortly after it aired on Sunday night, I really liked the Clint Eastwood Chrysler Super Bowl ad and said it was the only ad worth remembering.
Well, it may very well be the most remembered Super Bowl ad of all time. However, a lot of conservatives weren’t so receptive. Karl Rove was “offended” by the ad. Over at NRO, Christian Schneider claimed the ad was nothing more than “a few vacuous bromides, masquerading as profundity” and for good measure reminded everyone that Eastwood had fathered five children with seven different women. Geoffery Norman at The Weekly Standard was a little more tactful but no less direct. “The ad was about politics, not cars,” writes Norman, “and it was an endorsement of bailouts, not hard work and grit.”
For his part, the 81-year old actor and director insists he is not affiliated with President Obama.
I think conservatives are not only shooting the messenger but they don’t get the message.
I never took the ad as an endorsement of President Obama. Rather I took it as a tribute to America’s resilience and can do spirit. I particularly liked the line, “We find a way through tough times and if we can’t find a way, we’ll make one.”
Frankly, the only reason that Karl Rove is “offended” is because he wished he had put out an ad like that. That ad said more in two minutes than not only what the Republican candidates have had to say in the past six months but also more than what President Obama has had to say in three years in office. But if Rove and other conservatives are going throw a fit over this then the Obama Administration would be foolish not to embrace this commercial.
As for Eastwood, he sounds positively Reaganesque. But I wouldn’t expect less from a man who understands not only the medium of film and television but the meaning of words especially when used sparsely. If Mitt Romney had narrated these lines, they would have gone in one ear and out the other.
Not all conservatives are attacking Eastwood. Here’s a defense of Eastwood by Mark Levin.
View all comments (20) | Leave a comment
More Blog Posts by Aaron Goldstein
http://spectator.org/blog/2012/02/07/in-defense-of-clint-eastwood
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Al Adab| 2.7.12 @ 1:15PM
Thank you for the article. I cannot be the only one who heard it as a Knute Rockne halftime speech. "Out team is down. But we have the sttrength within us to turn the game around. We can overcome those who have us in this position. We can get up off the mat and by our own perserverance gain the victory. Someday when the breaks are beating the boys, win just one for the Gipper."
I saw it as a call for self-reliance, for American ingenuity not as an apology for bailouts. We made a wrong choice in 2008 and we can come back and correct it. Creation of wealth, not its redistribution, is the answer to a faltering economy.
Rove notwithstanding, the GOP should grab that ad and run it often. Be bold, be brave, victory can yet be ours.
W| 2.7.12 @ 2:08PM
Al Adab
I liked the ad and did not see it a political support for Obama or anyone else. It seems were are getting to view everything as a political statement. There is a life out there without politics. Eastwood was just making an ad for the USA using football (halftime) as a methapor and Detroit as the symbol for the loss of factories.
PCP Smoker| 2.7.12 @ 9:00PM
Right, because as John Boehner, Kevin McCarthy, Eric Cantor, and Mitch McConnell have shown us, they are all "bold and brave." I don't know if you are an arab, but it's time for the blinders/turban to come off, 53% of the nation is on some type of government assistance of the other.
Richard| 2.7.12 @ 1:22PM
Aaron, I agree. One of the unfortunate consequences of wraparound media to conservatism has been the irresistable urge to subject everything under the sun to the Procrustean bed of assumed political motive and bias.
Chrysler is selling cars (or Fiat/Chrysler, if you will). A person is free to purchase a Chrysler, or not, but the company is still in the game of moving iron. Since the average ad agency would rather come up with a sequel than an original thought, it's almost predictable that Chrysler's agency would seek to capitalize on last Super Bowl's iconic Eminem ad with another sheet from the same hymnbook. No doubt they 'focus-grouped' customer and audience concerns over the direction of the economy, and perceptions about Chrysler. They rolled with 'Scenes of Detroit 2.0', and hired as a narrator the actor perhaps most associated with toughness, and certainly associated with Detroit through his star turn in 'Gran Torino'. Eastwood does this for a living, and accepted the gig. To think that this ad was conceived and inspired within the bowels of the Executive Office Building suggests that some people might wish to go take a walk and breathe some fresh air for a little while.
Full disclosure, I drive a Volkswagen, but my wife hails from southeastern Michigan, we began our courtship in the bleachers at Tiger Stadium 35 years ago, and her dad was a product systems engineering manager for Chrysler in the pre-Iacocca days. So yes, I'm a sucker for appeals to Detroit's heritage. Cue up 'Standing in the Shadows of Motown'.
Kind regards,
Richard
Aaron Goldstein| 2.7.12 @ 2:30PM
Wow! The Tigers during the Ralph Houk era. Did this courtship at the corner of Michigan and Trumbull begin during one of Mark "The Bird" Fidrych's starts?
Mazel Tov to your continued bliss.
Skippy| 2.7.12 @ 2:54PM
Aaron and Richard,
I went to my first Tigers game in 1962.
I still have the pennant with the Tiger leaping out of the stadium.
My old man was automotive editor at WJR, and all the auto companies would lend him their newest cars for a week or two in hopes of getting a favorable review.
The navy blue Fleetwood we took to the U.P. camping turned more than a few heads!
Detroit was the industrial center of the planet then.
I weep to see it looking like Beirut.
Thanks Democrats and the UAW!
Aaron Goldstein| 2.7.12 @ 3:09PM
I've only been to Detroit once and that was in August 1999 to see a game in Tiger Stadium before it was shuttered. I took a cab there and he drove along Woodward Avenue where we passed the soon to be opened Comerica Park on one side and the Ford Theater on the other. As for its surroundings, Beirut would be an apt description.
If you're first hand account and this photo essay from French photographers Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre is any indication precious little has changed.
http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307, 18882089_1850973,00.html.
PCP Smoker| 2.7.12 @ 9:03PM
People in marketing love guys like you. The ad had nothing to do with your car or your dating, as if anyone gives a fuck about that, but there you are, drawing emotional connections to piece of propaganda. Obama is going to sweep you off your feet. Wait until you see his commercials.
PCP Smoker| 2.7.12 @ 9:41PM
By the way, asshole. This ad was filmed in LA and New Orleans. So much for creaming your pants. Creep.
Kingsmill| 2.7.12 @ 1:38PM
The ad might have had some resonance if it had touted Ford's rejection of bailouts.
Levin calls this propaganda and a defense of crony capitalism, socialism, an attack on liberty.He gives Eastwood the benefit of the doubt for being unaware of the propagandist nature of the ad. It's called damning with faint praise.
Seek| 2.7.12 @ 1:50PM
I'm with Aaron. To project political motive, Leftist motive at that, onto a can-do, morning-in-America speech is pretty breathtaking. Clint Eastwood, aside from having filmmaking talent and well-honed libertarian instincts, saw this doing ad as a civic duty. Karl Rove kind of wishes he'd thought of the ad first. Too bad for him.
the accountant| 2.7.12 @ 1:57PM
............fathered five children with seven different women........hmmm.........how was that accomplished.......Clint Eastwood he's the man!
RJ| 2.7.12 @ 1:58PM
Even if we credit Eastwood as sounding "Reaganesque," the example he was talking about is closely connected in the public eye with the federal bailout of Chrysler for which Obama has already claimed credit. The ad serves Obama's "Morning in America." Clint Eastwood had to know what he was getting into.
Casey Abell| 2.7.12 @ 2:14PM
"If Mitt Romney had narrated these lines, they would have gone in one ear and out the other."
Yeah, and if Goldstein fave Herman Cain had narrated the ad, he would have said: "It's half time in America and the score is 9-9-9!" Followed by an idiotic grin.
We know you don't like Romney, Aaron. But you don't have to defend this asinine propaganda for Obama's bailouts.
Casey Abell| 2.7.12 @ 2:19PM
By the way, Jay Leno (of all people) had the best comment on the ad: "It's half time in in America, but China’s got the ball and we’re down by 15 trillion!"
Trinacria| 2.7.12 @ 2:45PM
16 trillion - but, hell, what's a trillion between comrades?
WL| 2.7.12 @ 2:27PM
Hasn't Eastwood always supported Republicans?
I seem to remember his hosting the inaugural gala all the back to HW Bush...
I do think the Chrysler ad was dissapointing, because I think it is kinda like a welfare artist boasting about making a new start since someone else paid this months rent...after they blew everything at the casino last month...
But then again, our side tries to use the Detroit failings as a sob story for the "common man"...
Does anyone remember that Hannity hawking the "Shutting Detroit Down" song during Tea-party day (April 15) a couple of years ago? The song made no real sense especially in the tea party philosophy.
Detroit should have shut down. And Chrysler FAILED.
Actually, I don't know why the Repubs allow the unions to strangle every business they invade...THEN cry about it shutting down...THEN, use the fallout to attack "the man"...
Who is always deemed...A Republican.
PCP Smoker| 2.7.12 @ 8:56PM
First, you need to stop reading CINOs. Rove, Weekly Standard? Could you not find David Brooks, David Frump, or Conor FryDork's opinions?
Second, this sentence "I never took the ad as an endorsement of President Obama. Rather I took it as a tribute to America's resilience and can do spirit." is bullshit.
According to Clint, we "pulled together" to save/help out Detroit. I don't recall agreeing to pull together to (1) expand the powers of the federal government, (2)violate the bankruptcy process, (3)screw the bondholders. Process is what makes our republic work. It prevents Obama-creeps from running wild with the latest populist .
But hen again, it sounds like you were balls-deep into the emotionalism of the propaganda rather than the cover it was trying to provide socialism.
Dimitry Aleksandrovich| 2.8.12 @ 2:27AM
Mr. Goldstein we may be worlds apart on foreign policy. I support Ron Paul you support intervention, but I think on the issue of this commercial and its message you and I see eye to eye. I am a traditional conservative with a Pat Buchanan-esque pro-labor and anti-free trade streak and I most definitely do not believe what's best for Global Free Trade is best for America and the American worker. I thought the Chrysler commercial and Eastwood as the spokesperson hit a note with the American people. A good percentage of Americans can remember a time when we were an industrial powerhouse and manufacturing was the foundation upon which the American economy was built. American workers supported local small businesses and American workers spent their money on American products. Yes many of our workers were union members and they were well paid, but they put that money back into the American economy and more American jobs and small businesses were created from it. It wasn't GM, Ford or Chrysler Dodge that opened up the globalist floodgates and it wasn't the union auto-workers that made the American auto industry unable to compete with the Japanese and others. Indeed it was the freetraders both in Washington DC and on Wall Street that opened up those floodgates and the losses we've sustained eversince didn't stop with the auto industry. Not long ago the state of California paid for a new span of the Bay Bridge to be built in China by Chinese laborers and with Chinese steel and then shipped to the United States. We used to have several steel mills here in the Bay Area and the industrial capacity to build those sections of the bridge right here, but thanks to globalism and free trade those industries no longer exist here in the Bay Area. Millions upon millions of manufacturing jobs have been lost since the 1970's and that's only gotten worse from Ronald Reagan to George Bush I to Bill Clinton to George Bush II and now to Obama. Maybe Americans were receptive to the commercial because the message rings true for communities across the country from Detroit, to your home city of Boston to my home city of San Francisco, California. We need to get rid of NAFTA, CAFTA and GATT and we need tariffs on imports, relaxed industrial regulations, tax incentives and if needed union concessions to make America an industrial giant once again.
Dimitry Aleksandrovich| 2.8.12 @ 2:36AM
I forgot to add when I heard that inbred runt Karl Rove saying he was offended by the add I wanted to punch him in the face because freetraders like him have sold this country and the American worker down the river. So the little runt should keep his dirty little trap shut before I punt his ass to China where he shipped all our jobs.