Last updated on February 7th, 2013 at 06:51 pm
The paranoiacs at Fox News are super afraid that the Chrysler Super Bowl ad starring Clint Eastwood had subliminal pro-Obama messages in it. Yes, that ad that was pro-America was really pro-Obama, or to put it more clearly, anything that is pro-America is pro-Obama to the Fox crowd and they object.
Why does Fox object to an ad that was pro-American spirit? Because they want America to fail under President Obama. They have told us this for three years now, but perhaps we failed to realize just how much they meant it.
From the February 8 edition of Fox News’ Fox & Friends courtesy of Media Matters:
In discussing the Super Bowl ad, the panel found that the creators of the ad had ties to Obama (translation: their firm has done work for ESPN, Coke and has done Obama art, which for this panel means they are Obama supporters). That should give you a clue as to how far from reality they have strayed.
Gretchen Carlson said, “And it made me think of subliminal messages. You know, kinda like, remember the olden days when you went to the movie theaters and they kinda flashed in coke and popcorn and they didn’t let you do that, let advertisers do that anymore. So if there is this history, maybe not on purpose, so do these people making this ad kind of skew it. I mean, Karl Rove said at the end of this two minute ad it should have said, ‘paid for by Barack Obama.'”
Only, of course, the ad was not paid for by Obama. It was not an ad for Obama the candidate but rather for America the country of which Obama is the President. As President, Obama did put his political capital on the line to lend lifeboats to the auto industry that they then used to save their companies. Fox has a problem with this; most notably, it seems, that Obama is President and took yet another well considered risk that turned out to be praiseworthy and successful.
Fox then rolled a clip of Karl Rove claiming that this ad makes the White House look like cheap, Chicago pols (somehow the White House is implicated in an ad made by Chrysler). Karl appears to be suffering from projection here. What is cheap about being pro-America? What is Chicago about Detroit? What is political about being for America?
The problem Fox is having is that the Clint Eastwood Super Bowl ad was a rousing call to the American spirit, a call to pull together. I summed it up thusly that night:
Walking down a dark tunnel, Clint Eastwood growls, “It’s halftime.” Ahh, that voice. That iconic silhouette. He continues, “It’s halftime in America, too.”
Comparing America to the struggles Detroit has faced and is overcoming, Eastwood says that because we all pulled together, the Motor City is fighting again. He credited our rallying around what was right and acting as one for Detroit’s success.
“This country can’t be knocked out with one punch; we get right back up again and when we do the world is going to hear the roar of our engines….Yeah, it’s halftime in America and our second half is about to begin.”
Watch here:
Naturally, this idea of a united America deeply offends Fox and the Republicans, who have been working on dividing us for as long as they’ve been stealing from us. First Karl Rove went nutter, claiming a connection between the ad and the White House, and then Fox doubled down on the crazy by suggesting that there are subliminal messages in the ad.
The White House did not direct or write the ad, however, the White House is responsible for the fact that the auto industry was given a chance to succeed (the same chance, albeit with more responsibility and real restructuring, that the banks were given). The automakers then took that chance and turned it into a rousing success.
That’s the kind of American spirit that used to be universal. What could be seen as traitorous in investing in an American company that hires American workers and manages to pull out of an almost sure bankruptcy to make an incredible success?
Since Fox can’t pin the ad on the White House, but they need to kill the very popular message of the ad, Gretchen went paranoid with claims of subliminal messages. Karl Rove previously tried to go after Republican Clint Eastwood for daring to make a pro-America ad, but Clint told them to make his day and since there isn’t much they can do to Clint, they moved on to greener pastures of subliminal messages and tin foil.
Of course, Carlson can’t prove that there are any such subliminal messages in the ad, because there are not. If it felt pro-Obama, that is only because it was hopeful, it was pro-America, and it was the equivalent of planting an American flag on top of the auto industry and saying, “We did it!” We all know that the only reason Chrysler was able to do it was because President Obama fought hard to give them the help they needed at a time when Republicans wanted to let the American auto industry die.
So whose fault is it that Republicans bet against American businesses and lost? They don’t want you to think of it that way, of course, so instead of allowing Chrysler to have its moment in the sun, they have to go negative and paranoid. They hope their attacks have the same success on Chrysler as they have had on the media; forcing Chrysler into the position of apologizing and making a pro-Republican ad. But how could Chrysler use a successful American auto company to make a pro-Republcan ad? Republicans wanted to kill the auto industry. They told us all that union labor was too entitled and they needed to learn a lesson. They told us this as they fed billions to Wall Street and banks.
The Chrysler ad was pro-America. The fact that Fox and Republicans are offended by the ad says more about how they view this country and the extent to which they want to see it fail, and do not see themselves as a part of it, than it does about Chrysler, Clint Eastwood, the advertising company, or the White House.
Most Americans want this country to succeed. We want people to get jobs. It makes us feel great to see an iconic American auto company be the comeback kid in a recession.
Fox knows we feel good about this, and they can’t have us feeling good because that might mean we were united, and if we were united while a Democrat was in office, well, that would be bad for them. So, like the spoiled little children they are, they want to ruin everyone’s moment of unity and happiness, kill the spirit of “yes we can” and make sure gloom and doom dominate.
Republicans are so petty that they cannot enjoy the success of a huge American business. They can’t stand to see the President getting even implied credit for work he actually did. They demand that no one give him credit or even suggest (subliminally!) that Obama made the right choice, let alone that things might get better for Americans soon.
Advertising agencies do not slip subliminal political messages into their ads. The client approves everything from the script to the talent to the final cut, so the claim that the ad agency has an Obama supporter in it (unproven) is moot to boot.
Does Chrysler love America? Maybe. Maybe that was the point of their ad. It sure seemed like it to me. The ad was meant to say, hey, America, thank you for pulling together, look what we did, and guess what, your second half is about to begin!
The Chrysler ad was full of hope and American spirit. It should tell us all we need to know that Republicans and Fox News are so outraged by it.
Sarah has been credentialed to cover President Barack Obama, then VP Joe Biden, 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and exclusively interviewed Speaker Nancy Pelosi multiple times and exclusively covered her first home appearance after the first impeachment of then President Donald Trump.
Sarah is two-time Telly award winning video producer and a member of the Society of Professional Journalists.
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