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But it does have to say "Buy Chrysler" to be about cars. Good to know.

Guys, remember, it's positive and therefor about Obama.

Don't need 'em. Rush and Hannity tell everyone what's acceptable and the homogeneous believers fall in line.

Although clearly I won't do it very well.

And the same thing happens in political ads too, right? You build up themes and then you don't have to mention them by name later. Do you see how mentioning recovery in Detroit, blaming failure on "division, discord, and blame", and calls to win in the second half are all tied in to Obama's message?

Not "no one". But you're being silly if you thought more than a small percentage of those who watched the ad could have said at that moment what company it was for. Most people don't know what brands are made by which company (and the brands were only briefly on the screen). Most people wouldn't automatically associate Detroit with Chrysler, just with cars manufacturing. Ask most people which car company makes Dodge, or Buick, or Ram, and odds are you'll get random answers.


The association most people will get is to the auto industry as a whole, not to any one company. And that association, when related to an economic recovery plan leads to government bail outs. Because while most people couldn't tell you which companies make which cars, or even which companies got what money, nearly everyone knows that there was a bail out of the auto industry and would absolutely associate any talk about recovery in Detroit (Motor City, for those who also don't know what Detroit is known for) to liberal economic policies. Period.

No, of course not. Never you.

No. That's a trap. If conservatives embrace the ad and claim that it supports their goal to help America recover, it will be followed by a stream of well thought out liberal op-eds speaking rationally about how the GOP has already embraced the use of government bail out as the means to American recovery, so why are they opposing <this idea, that idea, the other idea>. That will be followed with labels of conservatives as either hypocrites or that they are actively opposed to American Recovery.


Is this your first time around the merry-go-round? The whole "Find conservatives saying things which appear to support our position" tactic is pretty common on the left. If you can get conservatives to agree (or even just appear to agree) that Recovery is connected to government spending, then any future opposition to such spending can be labeled as conservative opposition to Recovery.

The pundits were absolutely correct to loudly and clearly reject the image of recovery presented in that ad. Doing otherwise would trap them down the line. By doing it loudly, and in fact making the claim that the ad was political (which forces the left to insist equally loudly that it wasn't), the conservatives gain the ability to point out every single time that any liberal uses Detroit recovery in their campaigns or in support of their agenda as proof that the ad was political, and that bailout money was used in a corrupt manner to aid their own reelections, agenda, etc.


Why the hell do you think I'm raising such a stink? The louder we make this connection *now*, the easier it is to point back to it later if/when Dems use language which ties into the language in this ad. That's how politics is done.

Edited, Feb 10th 2012 5:47pm by gbaji

After, but before hearing buzz about "The Chrysler ad". The only reveal was the list of brands at the end of the ad. That was relatively brief, and most people couldn't tell you if "Jeep" is a Chrysler, GM, or Ford brand (and that was the most recognizable of the brands that I remember seeing). I'm sure if you watched it and really paid attention, perhaps pausing it to read all the brands, and then spent some time thinking about which car manufacturer those brands are associated with, you'd realize they were all Chrysler, but most people aren't going to do that and aren't going to care anyway.



But Chrysler wasn't revealed at any point. Hell. For all most viewers thought, it wasn't from any single car company, but was a conglomeration of car brands joining together to spend the high cost of a 2 minute superbowl ad on a "let's rebuild america" bit. It's not like that's never been done either. Um... Doubly so in a... wait for it... political ad. most of those have a list of the people who paid for the ad at the end (required to by law IIRC). So by providing that list of brands, they also covered the legal requirements of a political ad nicely, didn't they?


Most people watching that ad likely didn't think "That was a great Chrysler ad". They thought more that it was a great political or psa type ad spot, and isn't it great that a list of car brands at the very end spent the money to do something that wasn't about trying to sell cars.

Edited, Feb 10th 2012 6:22pm by gbaji

So that every time Obama or any Dem or their liberal pundits take credit for the Detroit auto workers recovery and/or attempt to argue that this is how America should recover, I can point it out to you and say "I told you so". I'm sure it wont faze you at all, but others might just read it and realize that I was right to point this out back then.

This looks like a Pro-Obama movie about how his administration took down Bin Laden to me.

Um... kinda the point though, isn't it? If Obama and Co have been taking credit for the auto recovery for some time now (which is true), then isn't an ad touting that very auto recovery and then saying that's what America needs to do, and then ending with "our second half is about to begin" pretty obviously a political ad in support of Obama? You're not stupid, are you?


Is this really to complicated for you? Or you're just lying because you don't want to acknowledge the obvious truth? Politician campaigns on X. Ad talks about X and says that this is what America should do. Ad is obviously political. I mean, if it had mentioned in general the need for America to work towards recovery, you'd have a point. but when it says "Detroit’s showing us it can be done. And, what’s true about them is true about all of us." is there any doubt that the point of this is to say "Obama is right"?

So, for once it wasn't a political partisan thread. I should have known better, but I was actually quite startled at how quickly, and thereafter how drawn-out, it derailed into a political thread.

Also: has gbaji now taken over varus's ecological forum niche?