Subtle...and WRONG

Signs of the apocalypse, part XXIV…the moonbat leftie blog Attytood and I agree on something. That something would be John Mellencamp’s new song “This is Our Country,” which Chevrolet is using to flog its trucks, replacing Bob Segar’s old, familiar “Like a Rock.” Actually, it’s not the song so much (lyrics here) as it’s the visuals in the commercials running during the World Series and both League Series before. I’ll quote Will Bunch, the proprietor of Attytood:

We saw troops in the jungles of Vietnam, where 58,000 Americans died for a mistake.

We saw Richard Nixon waving goodbye from the helicopter in 1974, after his secret government of dirty tricksters damn near destroyed the Constitution.

We saw, to our disbelief and amazement, shots of the worst of Hurricane Katrina, the howling winds and the flooded-out city, apparently mitigated by a shot of a Habitat-for-Humanity style rebuilding.

Then we saw the thing that truly amazed us, the beams of light in Lower Manhattan from where the World Trade Center once stood, and where 2.973 people were murdered five years ago.

[…]

How did you feel watching the ad? We felt angry.

Oh sure, you can rationalize it. You could say that after a generation of morning-in-America feel-good commercials from Madison Avenue, this is at least a more honest portrayal of the American experience. You could also note that GM, in some ways, isn't the worst corporate citizen within the rogues' gallery better known as the Fortune 500. They did hire a lot of African-Americans in the Rosa Parks era, after all, which is why so many left places like Montgomery for Detroit. And regarding Katrina, at least they did throw some dollars that way...we looked it up.

No matter. You just don't use 9/11 or Katrina to sell a product...period.

Mr. Bunch is correct, but he goes on to dilute his anger with a bunch (no pun…) of “progressive” arguments against the ad and those evil corporate America types, yadda, yadda, yadda. But I agree with his point: it’s in extremely bad taste to use images of the two most painful disasters this country has endured in a long time to sell trucks.

I think there’s a little bit more than truck selling going on here, however. The inclusion of the Viet Nam images and Nixon’s famous farewell gestures as he left the White House for the last time immediately preceding the Katrina and 9/11 images establishes a subtle but direct connection between history and current events. And that connection, however subtle, is negative, given the Viet Nam and Iraq comparisons that are en vogue, and the ultra-left’s noises about impeaching President Bush. I’m surprised Mr. Bunch missed that.

The image sequences in the commercial are probably lost on the average person under 30, after all Viet Nam and Nixon resigning under pressure of impeachment happened before they were born. The 30-and-under demographic isn’t the target, however—that cohort has a poor voting track record. Boomers vote, and Boomers are the target of those negative visuals. I think Mellencamp, with the active participation of Campbell-Ewald, artfully used a freakin’ Chevy commercial to advance his anti-war, anti-Bush agenda. Or maybe I’m just paranoid. But I don’t think so. Is there any other plausible reason for those specific images to appear in that specific order? You tell me.