Another Beer, Dragon Lady!

For some reason, a bit mysterious since I had no allegiance to or interest in either entrant, I watched a good deal more of this Super Bowl than many in the recent past.  Without a horse in the race, I typically find the hype more than I can bear, both wrt the "game" itself and the overall event and all it entails and signifies.

I found myself having to remind others that our routine muting of commercials should probably be suspended on this occasion.  At the time, it was the history of amazing over-the-top commercials that motivated me.  But in hindsight, perhaps I could have argued that our beloved guaranteed-profitable corporations, they who these days routinely buy politicians and corrupt any effort to regulate them or defend the Commons, were spending sums approaching the per-day bonuses of their CEOs on these ads and desperately need and deserve our breathless attention.

Anyway, we did greatly enjoy some of the ads, hopefully without having been too subliminally browbeaten into purchase of products we don't need.  Dogs were a common popular aspect, with most outspoken voter (a cat owner) definitely a fan of the Doritos cat-burying.

Somehow I missed the start of a certain Chrysler ad.  But, nerve-endings perhaps sharpened by recent re-enjoyment of Gran Torino, I could not mistake the Kowalski-er, Eastwood voice.  I won't pretend that I found the narrative wholly to my liking, but I admit the portion I caught was pretty inspirational, beyond the charisma of that voice.

Apparently others picked up on that one too:

Nobody does hissy fits like Karl Rove; the master of hardball, dirty-trick politics is constantly outraged, outraged, at his opponents’ underhanded tactics. And the latest hissy-target is the Chrysler ad during the Super Bowl, starring Clint Eastwood.

Jon Cohn gets it: it’s actually a double-edged problem for the Republicans. They hate any reminder that they were dead wrong on the auto bailout; and they hate any thought that the Democrats are becoming the party of optimism. Hey, only Republicans are allowed to celebrate American success!

And behind the yelling lies, almost surely, a growing sense of panic:

Here's a bit of the Cohn post Paul Krugman linked to:

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By now, you’ve probably seen or heard about the ad, which Chrysler calls “Halftime in America.” It stars Clint Eastwood, narrating the story of Detroit's comeback and turning it into a metaphor for America. The message happens to dovetail with the story that President Obama has been telling, about his rescue of the auto industry and the country’s slow climb out of economic despair.

During a Fox News appearance on Monday morning, Rove suggested the similarities were not coincidental:

I was, frankly, offended by it. ... it is a sign of what happens when you have Chicago-style politics, and the president of the United States and his political minions are, in essence, using our tax dollars to buy corporate advertising.

I have no idea whether Rove really believes Chrysler produced that ad in order to do President Obama a political favor. But the fact that he and other Republicans are so worked up could mean that they are scared—not of the advertisement itself, but of the themes it contains.

Those themes are optimism and national pride. As Salon’s Joan Walsh noted on the Ed Show Monday evening, Republicans have basically owned those themes since the 1980s, when Ronald Reagan won an election with them. But lately President Obama has been the one making the case that it’s morning in America or, at least, just before dawn. He did it in the State of the Union and he’s done it in a series of major speeches since.

The message wouldn’t resonate if it had no basis in reality. But the latest economic indicators suggest the economy really is starting to grow, albeit slowly and tentatively. And nowhere is that more obvious than in the Midwest and Michigan, where the auto industry’s rebound has helped reduce unemployment to levels not seen since before Obama took office.

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If that old scuzz-ball Rove is angry the Universe suddenly seems a Better Place.