Joe Romm may think this is the worst Super Bowl commercial {via} ever, but I have to disagree:
I believe that Audi intended it as a caricature: the only difference is that there is not yet an actual police force dedicated to environmental law enforcement at such a visible level. The absurd, petty laws from the commercial actually exist and the intrusiveness of the movement is incredible. (Looks like I’m not the only one that’s noticed the parallels.)
The pretext of global warming catastrophe is becoming increasingly flimsy as time passes. Each day finds new doubts coming to light—the jig is almost up. At some point, the justification for government expansion to prevent a cataclysmic future will evaporate entirely. The time is ripe for the left to make its move. With the health care legislation stalled for the time being, the Senate might take up Waxman-Markey or perhaps something even more meddlesome.
I think a lot of the opposition to socialized medicine by the public stemmed from picturing their health care being run by the post office or the DMV. This mental image crystallized the end towards which the reform was heading and galvanized them into action. In much the same way, I hope that the Audi commercial brought the slippery slope of the environmentalist movement into focus so that the average Super Bowl watcher could see what his view of “going green” would lead to when it became compulsory.
People don’t seem to mind statism when it’s affecting other people, but they draw a line when the hectoring and meddling becomes pervasive. This is the last remnant of the vaunted American sense of life. It is unprincipled, pragmatic, and tenuous to be sure:
A dictatorship cannot take hold in America today. This country, as yet, cannot be ruled—but it can explode. It can blow up into the helpless rage and blind violence of a civil war. It cannot be cowed into submission, passivity, malevolence, resignation. It cannot be “pushed around.” Defiance, not obedience, is the American’s answer to overbearing authority. The nation that ran an underground railroad to help human beings escape from slavery, or began drinking on principle in the face of Prohibition, will not say “Yes, sir,†to the enforcers of ration coupons and cereal prices. Not yet.
— Ayn Rand, “Don’t Let It Go,†Philosophy: Who Needs It, 213.
The dystopic future envisioned by Audi and its ad agency is chilling and repugnant, which is exactly the point of the ad no matter how inadvertent. Americans will meet the “overbearing authority” it represents with defiance and the left knows this.
The commercial is such a contradiction, I can’t figure out their actual intentions, although it’s possible that its creators simply made a self-contradicting, illogical commercial and don’t care. The anteater still confuses me. What is that about? Perhaps senselessness was their goal, so people would talk about it.
C.T.,
I may be stretching but I think that, if the producers were parodying the greenies, then it makes sense for them to have a “heroic” pet.
From Wikidpedia:
Termites are also considered to be a major source of atmospheric methane, one of the prime greenhouse gases.
Its [anteater] food consists mainly of termites, which it obtains by opening nests with its powerful sharp anterior (front) claws. As the insects swarm to the damaged part of their dwelling, it draws them into its mouth by means of its long, flexible, rapidly moving tongue covered with sticky saliva. Their tongue can be flicked up to 150-160 times or more per minute. A full-grown giant Anteater eats upwards of 30,000 ants and termites a day.
Who better to symbolize the destruction of global warming emitters than the anteater? And, of course, relegating the human race and its aspirations to the level of communal insects.
(Like I said, I might be stretching.)
C. Andrew