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| Home Front: Culture Wars |
| Silverado Truck Ad Images & 'Our Country' Song Offends a Few |
| 2006-10-25 |
| Rosa Parks became an enduring symbol of the American civil rights movement after she refused to surrender her bus seat to a white passenger in Montgomery, Ala., 51 years ago. Today, Parks has posthumously become a pitchwoman for a line of pickup trucks. Another civil rights icon, Martin Luther King Jr., also has been pressed into service by General Motors in a new TV commercial. The spot also includes images of President Richard Nixon, Muhammad Ali, the late race car driver Dale Earnhardt, some dancing hippies and a memorial to the victims of the 9/11 attacks. The commercial for Chevrolet's Silverado truck has gotten plenty of airplay -- and a few expressions of surprise, shock and puzzlement -- since it went into heavy rotation during pro football games and the baseball playoffs over the past three weeks. The ad mixes vintage photographs and news footage from the past half-century, accompanied by a rousing John Mellencamp song called "Our Country." Some of the images are uplifting, such as a photo of Parks sitting on a bus and a brief clip of King preaching. Others evoke painful memories, such as Nixon's wave from the presidential helicopter upon his resignation in 1974, U.S. troops in Vietnam, damage from Hurricane Katrina and the twin light beacons at the World Trade Center site that memorialized those killed in the attacks. |
| Posted by:Bobby |
| #18 Another reason to buy Mopar. |
| Posted by: no mo uro 2006-10-25 21:57 |
| #17 I was for the ad before I was against it. |
| Posted by: John Fn Kerry 2006-10-25 13:27 |
| #16 I didn't see the ad, but I hate it. |
| Posted by: wxjames 2006-10-25 12:35 |
| #15 I hate Mellancamp and Chevy so I'm boycotting both! |
| Posted by: DarthVader 2006-10-25 11:47 |
| #14 Since schools gave up teaching real history and instead spend endless hours of selling guilt and sin for being American, I doubt very many in the under 40 brackets would understand much of the imagery. So Chevy is appealing to soon to collect Social Security crowd. Wow, thatÂ’s leaves the future to the Japanese truck manufacturers too. |
| Posted by: Procopius2K 2006-10-25 10:58 |
| #13 Mexicans do the work There, I fixed it for you! |
| Posted by: NoBeards 2006-10-25 10:52 |
| #12 That ad surprised me a little given Mellencamp's poltics and the focus on disasters. The east coast was just fisherman, but the South was Hurricane Katrina and the West was a wildfire. Nevertheless, I thought it was an effective ad. What really puzzled me though, was the Chevy Silverado ad entirely in Spanish. Was that aimed at all the illegals working construction? Kind of like the Home Depot stores in the South with bilingual signs (spanish in big letters, english in small letters underneath). |
| Posted by: RWV 2006-10-25 10:48 |
| #11 The graphic is appropo. Who cares? |
| Posted by: mcsegeek1 2006-10-25 10:28 |
| #10 There's something, um, healthy, yeah that's the word, healthy, very healthy about her, BA. I'm pretty sure I need to check her vitals - to see if she's as healthy as she looks. Healthy. Yes. |
| Posted by: .com 2006-10-25 10:23 |
| #9 Why couldn't they just put the rangerup.com girl in their ads? That's something we could all agree on, right, boys? |
| Posted by: BA 2006-10-25 10:11 |
| #8 I find John Mellancamp offensive, and am very angry about Cesar Chavez not being represented. Mexicans do the work no one else is willing to do and should be represented as well in this shameless plug. Mexicans like Chevys too. |
| Posted by: Thoth 2006-10-25 09:56 |
| #7 While I agree with Carson in the article that King and Parks' role in the Civil Rights movement are and should be seen as patriotic, I also agree with Mike that this confusing melange of disconnected images screams Baby Boomer idiocy. I'm reminded of those ultimately meaningless GAP ads where [insert historical personage] "wore khaki". A spoof I saw showed a famous picture of Der Fuhrer and said, "Hitler wore khaki". |
| Posted by: JDB 2006-10-25 09:50 |
| #6 Oops, Jerry Springer (not Spring). |
| Posted by: BA 2006-10-25 09:28 |
| #5 Oh, good freakin' grief. A few want to whine about this ad? It's our history folks. Could've well just put in clips of the Challenger explosion, kids fleeing Columbine or Jerry Spring for that matter. Time for the whiners to grow up. And, I really don't get the NAACP guy's quote...about it "just hauling debris off from Katrina." Wasn't Katrina ALL about New Orleans and how Bush is evil? I would've thought they'd be milking that (and Rosa Parks & MLK's inclusion). Good grief, that ALL says to me that "Pickups ain't just for rednecks anymore." Here in the outskirts of Atlanta, I can't tell you how many black (mostly construction) guys I now see driving Chevy pickups. Almost boggles the mind. I'd bet they'd be o.k. with the ad. It's high time some people just quit their whining and do some REAL work. |
| Posted by: BA 2006-10-25 09:28 |
| #4 I liked the ad and, frankly, didn't notice Rosa Parks and MLK were featured until I saw this article. |
| Posted by: badanov 2006-10-25 09:27 |
| #3 nice post Mike. I kinda got this impression of Mellencamp that he's not exactly a big business kind of guy. I always thought he was fairly lefty. I figured he'd be doing this truck ad and giving some proceeds to poor union workers or some such. I could be wrong though. |
| Posted by: Broadhead6 2006-10-25 08:06 |
| #2 Rosa Parks, MLK, Richard Nixon, Muhammad Ali, Dale Earnhardt, dancing hippies, and 9/11. And, almost, an atom bomb. What's the message this iconography is trying to get across? Rosa Parks, MLK -- "Silverado: official truck of the Civil Rights Movement"? "Judge our truck not by the color of its paint job, but by the content of its engine bay"? Richard Nixon -- "Silverado: this truick is not a crook"? "Silverado: official truck of my dog Checkers"? "Buy this truck or you won't have General Motors to kick around anymore"? Muhammad Ali -- "Silverado: floats like a butterfly, stings like a bee"? Dale Earnhardt -- "If Dale had been driving a Silverado, he'd still be with us"? dancing hippies -- "Silverado, duuuuude, it's like . . . cosmic"? atomic bombs -- "Silverado: it's 'da bomb!'"? "Our trucks are tough enough to survive the end of the world"? Or maybe all together, the message is this: "This ad was put together by self-indulgent Baby Boomers who lack sufficient moral judgment to know the difference between history, nostalgia, and commerce," |
| Posted by: Mike 2006-10-25 07:51 |
| #1 Another reason to love my F-150 |
| Posted by: Frank G 2006-10-25 07:46 |