[Update: Corrected in the cold grey light of morning: As commentators more awake after the game than I noted, Charlton Heston has been dead for years. I knew he was Clint Eastwood, we even talked about it during the game; no I idea why I then substituted Heston in the post. One of my blogging rules is that when I screw up, I correct, but don’t hide the fact of the error. This is a beauty.]
By far the most notable Super Bowl commercial was Charlton Heston Clint Eastwood reassuring America that it’s only half time and there’s still everything to play for. As his gravelly voice touted the resurgence of Detroit, I thought at first it would be an Obama commercial, and then it was Clint Eastwood/the Man with No Name/Dirty Harry/Walt Kowalski and Chrysler, and it wasn’t, overtly, pro-Obama after all.
But maybe it in a way it was Chrysler’s way of saying thank-you on the QT for the bail-out; if so, getting long-time Republican Charlton Heston to do the spot was a stroke of genius insurance against charges of partisanship. [Update: I still think it felt like a way to say thank you without having to admit it was a campaign expenditure; and I thought of Eastwood as a Republican — see below.]
And a new catch phrase is launched.
[Update: I thought Eastwood was a Republican because he was elected as Mayor of a town in California on the Republican ticket. At least according to a Wikipedia article on the Political life of Clint Eastwood, however, his politics are more complicated than that.]
Charlton Heston died in 2008! That was Clint Eastwood, who isn’t a conservative.
Absolutely, 100% pro-Obama. Well deserved, and a moving piece.
It would be a stroke of genius indeed if Chrysler got a man who had been dead 4 years to do a commercial for them – a miracle like the parting of the Red Sea in Heston’s “Ten Commandments.” I am not sure how Eastwood would feel to be mistaken for a dead man.
Idiots.. That was clint eastwood not charleton heston. Heston has beeb
N dead for years.
I did not for a second think this was an Obama ad. Chrysler has been running ads with this look and feel for some time. (See http://youtu.be/jg4dDVpSgnM as an example). The nanosecond the commercial stared I recognized it as unmistakably a Chrysler commercial.
I also saw very little politics in it. I saw it as simple advertising designed as a patriotic tear jerker and a play on the movie Gran Torino. Good ad actually. I knew I was being played and didn’t seem to mind. Actually made me want to buy an American car (this whole line of commercials seems to have the effect on me).
It is funny the way you saw this commercial. This morning on Morning Joe they talked about the ad and some saw it as a republican leaning ad. It appears that the ad is something of a Rorschach Test. I may have missed any political undertones (intended or unintended) of the ad since I knew it to be a car commercial from the outset.
Great Commercials…!!!
I don’t understand what it wants me to DO? Bail out the REST of faltering America like we did Chrysler? What? The fact that one can see what one wants in it means that one does NOT see what Chrysler wants.
In that sense, it’s a failure as it is just an empty space. Perhaps well-done, but empty.