After I posted the “No worries, man. Ev’rythin’ will be all-right” Volkswagen ad last night, a friend emailed with another Super Bowl ad “outrage”: CAIR complained about this ad,
Apparently they’re upset that the Arab has a camel, or something, and that you can’t vote for him at the website.
You can, however, vote for the bikers, the cowboys or the show girls.
The ad, by the way, borrows from
the old Puerto Rican saying, “he thinks he’s the last Coca Cola in the desert”, referring to a guy who think’s he’s God gift to women
Priscilla Queen of the Desert
Mad Max
Blazing Saddles
and Lawrence of Arabia (who was most definitely not Arab)
The Mad Men are back, and I’m not the only one loving it. Jeff Jensen has Four Fearless Predictions for Season Four, which are,
1. Henry Francis Will Dump Betty, Not Vise Versa.
2. Betty will slap Don. And then… ???
3. Advertising Age Will Expose Don Draper’s Dick Whitman Past.
4. Lucky Strike is going to put its account in review.
Jensen may be on target – we’ll find out soon enough, but my best bet is that item #1, Henry drops Betty, is the most likely.
One of the many things I enjoy about Mad Men is how the writers weave in real brands, such as London Fog, Hilton, Utz and Jantzen, in the storylines. Having grown up in Puerto Rico where my father worked at Hilton, and where Jantzen was a preferred brand of swimwear, it makes the program distant and familiar at the same time. Too bad Don told Jantzen to get lost in last week’s episode – I would have loved to see what the agency would have come up with for promoting the brand.
BTW, we’ve included a hedcut of Draper with this story, but we should note that the Journal’s signature dot-ink portraits weren’t launched until 1979, and this season “Mad Men” takes place in 1964. But you have to admit Draper’s hedcut looks pretty cool.
Which brings up the issue of memory: memory is a funny thing. I have been reading the Wall Street Journal since the early 1970s and could swear they always had hedcuts.
Clearly, they didn’t.
Those of us who do/don’t recall the “John & Marsha” skit Peggy and her assistant joke around with in last week’s episode can find it on YouTube,
Man Men’s on at 10PM Eastern tonight on AMC. You can watch last week’s episode, season 4 premiere, Public Relations below the fold (available only for a week from today), but the Wall Street Journal archives the recap of the episodes,
Mikhail S. Gorbachev, the last leader of the old Soviet Union, has been glamorized to the point where he actually modeled for Louis Vuitton; the consumer is supposed to aspire to own a duffle bag just like Gorby’s.
And we all should ask that question. Here’s what she has to say about Gorbachev:
For instance, the documents cast Gorbachev in a far darker light than the one in which he is generally regarded. In one document, he laughs with the Politburo about the USSR’s downing of Korean Airlines flight 007 in 1983—a crime that was not only monstrous but brought the world very near to nuclear Armageddon. These minutes from a Politburo meeting on October 4, 1989, are similarly disturbing:
Lukyanov reports that the real number of casualties on Tiananmen Square was 3,000.
Gorbachev: We must be realists. They, like us, have to defend themselves. Three thousands . . . So what?
And a transcript of Gorbachev’s conversation with Hans-Jochen Vogel, the leader of West Germany’s Social Democratic Party, shows Gorbachev defending Soviet troops’ April 9, 1989, massacre of peaceful protesters in Tbilisi.
Stroilov’s documents also contain transcripts of Gorbachev’s discussions with many Middle Eastern leaders. These suggest interesting connections between Soviet policy and contemporary trends in Russian foreign policy. Here is a fragment from a conversation reported to have taken place with Syrian president Hafez al-Assad on April 28, 1990:
H. ASSAD. To put pressure on Israel, Baghdad would need to get closer to Damascus, because Iraq has no common borders with Israel. . . .
M. S. GORBACHEV. I think so, too. . . .
H. ASSAD. Israel’s approach is different, because the Judaic religion itself states: the land of Israel spreads from Nile to Euphrates and its return is a divine predestination.
M. S. GORBACHEV. But this is racism, combined with Messianism!
H. ASSAD. This is the most dangerous form of racism.
One doesn’t need to be a fantasist to wonder whether these discussions might be relevant to our understanding of contemporary Russian policy in a region of some enduring strategic significance.
As uncomfortable as it may be for those who think it’s progressive to keep Mao’s Little Red Book on their bedside table or favor the radical chic of a Che t-shirt, we need to expose and acknowledge the reality of Soviet-style communism that has claimed so many tens of millions lives. A good place to start would be recognizing it for what it was, and understanding its history.
Until then, we shall continue to see tyrants selling expensive luggage while comfortably driven around in limousines.
Mikhail S. Gorbachev, the last leader of the old Soviet Union, has been glamorized to the point where he actually modeled for Louis Vuitton; the consumer is supposed to aspire to own a duffle bag just like Gorby’s.
And we all should ask that question. Here’s what she has to say about Gorbachev:
For instance, the documents cast Gorbachev in a far darker light than the one in which he is generally regarded. In one document, he laughs with the Politburo about the USSR’s downing of Korean Airlines flight 007 in 1983—a crime that was not only monstrous but brought the world very near to nuclear Armageddon. These minutes from a Politburo meeting on October 4, 1989, are similarly disturbing:
Lukyanov reports that the real number of casualties on Tiananmen Square was 3,000.
Gorbachev: We must be realists. They, like us, have to defend themselves. Three thousands . . . So what?
And a transcript of Gorbachev’s conversation with Hans-Jochen Vogel, the leader of West Germany’s Social Democratic Party, shows Gorbachev defending Soviet troops’ April 9, 1989, massacre of peaceful protesters in Tbilisi.
Stroilov’s documents also contain transcripts of Gorbachev’s discussions with many Middle Eastern leaders. These suggest interesting connections between Soviet policy and contemporary trends in Russian foreign policy. Here is a fragment from a conversation reported to have taken place with Syrian president Hafez al-Assad on April 28, 1990:
H. ASSAD. To put pressure on Israel, Baghdad would need to get closer to Damascus, because Iraq has no common borders with Israel. . . .
M. S. GORBACHEV. I think so, too. . . .
H. ASSAD. Israel’s approach is different, because the Judaic religion itself states: the land of Israel spreads from Nile to Euphrates and its return is a divine predestination.
M. S. GORBACHEV. But this is racism, combined with Messianism!
H. ASSAD. This is the most dangerous form of racism.
One doesn’t need to be a fantasist to wonder whether these discussions might be relevant to our understanding of contemporary Russian policy in a region of some enduring strategic significance.
As uncomfortable as it may be for those who think it’s progressive to keep Mao’s Little Red Book on their bedside table or favor the radical chic of a Che t-shirt, we need to expose and acknowledge the reality of Soviet-style communism that has claimed so many tens of millions lives. A good place to start would be recognizing it for what it was, and understanding its history.
Until then, we shall continue to see tyrants selling expensive luggage while comfortably driven around in limousines.
Neanderthals mated with some modern humans after all and left their imprint in the human genome, a team of biologists has reported in the first detailed analysis of the Neanderthal genetic sequence.
And now for a few cavemen ads:
UPDATE
Commenter John sent Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer:
In fact, I was deliriously happy driving home tonight, thinking about all that grand and terrible prehistory.
Jules also pokes fun at the AP’s take, “While many people think of Neanderthals as very primitive, they had tools for things like hunting and sewing, controlled fire, lived in shelters and buried their dead.” Jules:
AP apparently thinks we got the non-Neanderthal part of our genome from Homo metrosexualensis or something like that.
Or at least from those Warren Buffet cavemen. Either way, fifteen minutes could save you fifteen percent or more on car insurance – or so they claim.
And,
Whoa! Conservatives?
Have scientists now stumbled on the source of contemporary conservative (formerly Neanderthal) white male anxiety? Are they expressing their distress with the relentless humanization of their kind?
Neanderthals mated with some modern humans after all and left their imprint in the human genome, a team of biologists has reported in the first detailed analysis of the Neanderthal genetic sequence.
And now for a few cavemen ads:
UPDATE
Commenter John sent Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer:
In fact, I was deliriously happy driving home tonight, thinking about all that grand and terrible prehistory.
Jules also pokes fun at the AP’s take, “While many people think of Neanderthals as very primitive, they had tools for things like hunting and sewing, controlled fire, lived in shelters and buried their dead.” Jules:
AP apparently thinks we got the non-Neanderthal part of our genome from Homo metrosexualensis or something like that.
Or at least from those Warren Buffet cavemen. Either way, fifteen minutes could save you fifteen percent or more on car insurance – or so they claim.
And,
Whoa! Conservatives?
Have scientists now stumbled on the source of contemporary conservative (formerly Neanderthal) white male anxiety? Are they expressing their distress with the relentless humanization of their kind?
Car rental company Sixt makes fun of Nicolas Sarkozy in a poster advertising campaign. Will the French president see the funny side?
There could be trouble ahead for the car rental company Sixt following its latest advertising campaign.
A German poster for the company carries a picture of the French hatchback the Citroën C3 with the slogan encouraging customers to “Do the same as Madame Bruni, choose a small French model” ((“Machen Sie es wie Madame Bruni. Nehmen Sie sich einen kleinen Franzosen”).
Here’s the ad:
Obviously they didn’t realize what it means when a short man is with a tall woman…