...I noted a particularly patriotic Chevy Truck commercial, in which John Mellencamp croons "This is our country" while a montage of iconic subjects like the Vietnam War, Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, and 9/11 culminates in a Chevy product shot. It felt a bit manipulative and egregiously cheesy, but in the heat of the football excitement I didn't give it another thought.
Then when I got home I read this sassy send-up of the ad in The New York Times. A choice excerpt:
And now we have Mr. Mellencamp, who’s done some rebranding of his own, having dropped the “Cougar” from his name back when his image needed a folksy turn. His political values seem equally elastic. He and his spouse once wrote a jeremiad against the Bush administration that said, in part: “It is time to take back our country. Take it back from political agendas, corporate greed and overall manipulation."
That was in 2003. Now he’s sitting on the fender of a Chevy truck, strumming a guitar and singing, “Well, I can stand beside ideals I think are right, and I can stand beside the idea to stand and fight.” He can also stand beside a nice shiny truck, if the fee is right.
A few days ago, Gawker, the Manhattan media site, ran a picture of a bar advertising, “The happiest happy hour south of ground zero.” Whether or not the statement is clinically true — a bit tough to measure, that — the message was beyond crass and deserved our contempt.
When it comes to selling bars, trucks or even politicians, you can wave the flag or you can drape one over a coffin. You can’t do both.
