Speaking of not understanding what it means to be human...
by David Atkins
Following up on my post yesterday about conservative lack of appreciation for basic humanity, here's a particularly insulting new ad from Cadillac. Methinks the jingoistic lady doth protest a bit too much:
For the video-impaired:
Why do we work so hard? For what? For this? For stuff? Other countries, they work, they stroll home, they stop by the cafe, they take August off. Why aren't you like that? Why aren't we like that? Because we're crazy, driven, hard-working believers, that's why. Those other countries think we're nuts. Whatever. Were the Wright Brothers insane? Bill Gates? Les Paul? Ali? Were we nuts when we pointed to the moon? That's right. We went up there. You know what we got? Bored. So we left. Got a car up there, left the keys in it. You know why? Because we're the only ones going back up there, that's why.
But I digress. It's pretty simple. You work hard, you create your own luck, and you gotta believe anything is possible. As for all the stuff, that's the upside of only taking two weeks off in August.
There's so much wrong with this morally and factually it's hard to know where to begin.
Those four weeks vacation are paid vacation. Bill Gates isn't exactly an innovator, and Muhammad Ali opposed official United States policy on war, race and economics. We did get to the moon first, but we weren't the first in space, and China will be heading to the moon soon.
American economic mobility is lower than in most of the rest of the industrialized world. If you work hard and create your own luck, you're likelier to improve your station in France than in America. Heck, the American Dream is more alive in Pakistan than in America.
And no. A slightly better car isn't worth two fewer weeks of even unpaid vacation, much less paid vacation. I think most Americans would agree with that, too.
That Cadillac would put out an ad like this as a form of "buy American" patriotism smacks less of pride than of cultural desperation, a pathetic attempt to assert a corporate-friendly truthiness long since exposed as a deceitful fraud.
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