This Is Our Country

Okay, using Rosa Parks in a Chevrolet commercial is a bit tacky and a lot silly (she's sitting on a BUS, people, not a car, a BUS--if she'd had herself one of your cars, you probably would never have heard of her). Using Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I have a dream" speech to sell cars: what exactly does this have to do with cars? Pandering, is what.

And I'm sure the people who lost their homes to Hurricane Katrina are enthralled to see their suffering and loss used to sell products. (Note that the people who had cars were able to leave New Orleans. The people who ended up living in squalor at the Superdome or the convention center: those were in large part the people without the means for their own transport.) But, oh, it's okay, because they show someone raising a new house right after that. See, a bunch of fresh-faced people rebuilt New Orleans all shiny and new, so it's all good, right? Now go buy a car.

And then, the pièce de résistance: the towers of light at the World Trade Center. Ooh, evoke patriotism, sell cars. I've said for years that it wouldn't be long before there were ads for 9/11 sales ("free flag with every purchase!")--apparently the manipulation of the deaths of thousands of people in the service of commerce is already upon us.

So where is hue and cry over this sleazy, repulsive advertising campaign by Chevrolet?

Nowhere.

Why? Because this is our country.