Andy McCarthy is right….
…the Saints did play like champions. And it was a pretty damn good game right up until the end. After that interception, though, you could tell the Colts were rattled. Peyton Manning especially. That was the nail in the coffin right there, except it was the Colts and they’ve pulled back from worse brinks before.
I enjoyed the game. I don’t watch much in the way of sports, but I do love a good football game. On that note – anyone here read any good sports-bloggers?
Oh, and I knew this ad would get some blog-traction today.
For a slightly more dystopian take, read this. Given the state of affairs we’re in over the growing and consumption of certain illicit plants this is not so far-fetched. And if it is far-fetched, then so is the war on drugs. So is the light-bulb ban.
My favorite ad – probably the stuff from Doritos. I laughed the hardest when that kid slapped the guy for taking his chip.
And I’m pretty excited about the new Ridley Scott Robin Hood movie, which I hadn’t heard anything about until last night. I was a big fan of Gladiator and I’ve always been big on Robin Hood stories. I remember seeing Kevin Costner’s version when I was ten, in a movie theater in Florida. The audience cheered after Morgan Freeman’s speech. Yes, those were simpler times. I still have a soft-spot for that movie, warts and all. I mean, who cares about the accent? If anything, Costner’s performance led directly to some really good lines in Robin Hood: Men in Tights.
You can have an open-thread here if y’all would like….
P.S. – I’m with Sonny Bunch (in the comments) on this one – to some degree. I think the ad was a parody of enviro-extremism, but I also think it didn’t take seriously the question of the security state. In other words, while it parodied the green movement, it laughed off the very real threat of the creeping security state, which can use green policies as easily as it can use marijuana or terrorism to grow and further intrude upon our privacy.
Wow, you couldn’t ask for a better ad against environmentalism than that. Holy Hannah, makes me want to go shoot something endangered out of spite.Report
Yeah, that ad creeped me the hell out.
They probably intended us to laugh in the whole “well, it will never come to that!” sense of laughter.Report
I’m glad you guys said what you said!
It was a really weird ad and put me off Audi, though they were fourth down the list for cars to buy when I get rich!
Damn Germans, they never get enough…think I’ll watch “The Lives of Others” tonight.Report
Psh, I’ll make it Inglourious Basterds.Report
Mr. FM, IF you haven’t seen The Lives of Others, I heartily recommend it. Kind of tells us what the future under Dear Leader and his minions will be like, and the dehumanization of ideological distortions.Report
I have indeed. It’s a much better movie for sure. But this ad made me more in the mood to see Nazis get killed than to ponder what replaced them.
As for our President, do you seriously believe that or are you being facetious? I ask this as what you would probably consider one of his minions (a “commie-dem”, to use your ridiculous phrase, Tallahassee intern).Report
BTW, Bob, I’m asking because I often honestly can’t tell, unlike, say, with Jaybird.Report
Hey, I don’t wanna pee on anyone’s parade but if ever a football game was fixed that one was! That was the NFL’s gift to Dear Leader. The symbolism was darn near unbearable, and wasn’t the overaged and debauched The Who just the greatest….Vince Lombardi wouldn’t have put up with this crap!Report
This is why I watch pro wrestling.Report
Seemed less fixed to me than the Patriots winning for Dear Leader in 2002.
“We’re all Patriots now!” lol.Report
Chad, perhaps you’re right! The only legitimate SB victories are those won by the Picksburgh Stillers…and that’s six and counting…!Report
I thought the Audi ad was pretty clearly intended as parody of environmentalists. I’m a little surprised to see people arguing that they were making some sort of super-green point with that commercial. Am I wrong?Report
No, I think you’re exactly right. I’m frankly bamboozled by a lot of the commentary on this thing. I thought it was just the right approach to environmental issues, or at least as much as a car commercial can take the right approach– gently mocking of the extreme vision of environmental responsibility while still recognizing that preserving the environment is an important responsibility.Report
I’m frankly bamboozled that you can take that attitude. There was nothing gentle about it.
The problem is less that it hits close to home than that it hits close to paranoid right-wing nonsense. It’s just yet another example of equating environmentalism with fascism and worse – portrays this as a good thing.
I am willing to admit to being too thin-skinned after years of being accused of being an eco-nazi-terrorist because I want to protect our dwindling fresh water supply though.Report
What I mean is, it is obviously parody.Report
Well yes. But it just seems like really bad parody, as insufferably smug as the people it thinks it’s mocking.Report
You might be right!Report
Yes but the problem is, as Erik and other commenters mentioned, that the whole thing hits way too close to home to be effective as a parody. I saw that ad and decided (for the moment at least) not to buy an Audi.Report
The ad hits too close to home b/c that is exactly the kind of regime I can see some of the tree huggers enforcing id they got their way. The ad reminds me of the Dead Kennedy’s song “California Über Alles” with its view of CA under Gov. Moonbeam.Report
More like some of us are sick of being baselessly accused of being such people, whom these days are more likely to be made of straw.
And after all, we’ve STILL got a bigger problem.Report
There seem to be some climate scientists that were willing to lie and fudge the data to prove their point, so I think they exist.Report
Ok Joseph, I think we understand that commercial was a futuristic speculation, whose ultimate intent was to sell cars, not make some point about the environmental movement.
Given that, exactly what do you think is the strawman? Certainly environmental advocates are not repudiating the police power of state to achieve their goals, and I can’t tell if you’re trying to argue otherwise. But if not that, what?Report
That “not repudiating the police power of the state” is equivalent to fascism, that environmentalism is just an excuse to boss people around and a conspiracy-hoax by Evil Communist Liberals to grab power, etc. I hear this all the time. The implication is that the real goal is to expand police powers as far as one possible can. Look at Erik’s comparison to the drug war (which, though bipartisan, has been overwhelmingly supported by conservatives). The straw man argument is that everyone who care about the environment are elitist yuppie commies who just want an excuse to make everyone the same as us and if you refuse, lock you up and steal your money. When in actual fact, we just want you to stop violating other people’s rights.
If some people treat this as a “lifestyle” and act ridiculous, and I suppose that I should be aiming my resentment at them, but I encounter them far less often if at all (and incidentally those I have encountered tend to be the most hostile to the use of police power – they’re usually left anarchists.)Report
Sorry, CA has proven time and time again that it is willing to use the state’s police power to modify people’s behavior, even when it does not violate other people’s rights. Apparently using the disposal, as pictured in the ad will soon be forbidden in San Fran if Newson has his way.
http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/green/San-Francisco-Mayor-Responds-to-Green-Police-Super-Bowl-Ad-jw-83817937.html?Report
“When in actual fact, we just want you to stop violating other people’s rights.”
I’m not following you. You’re talking about the environmental movement here, not the drug war, or are you?
In any case, it should be pretty clear that environmental movement is not repudiating the police power of the state to accomplish its goals. You could also argue further that is in fact the intent of the environmental movement, ie, to use the police power of the state to establish social control over those who disagree with them. I’m actually sympathetic to that point of view.
But it’s not necessarily the point of the commercial to go that far. Are you suggesting that it is? Again, where’s the strawman?Report
You could argue that, and maybe it’s even true of some portion of the environmental movement that I’m not a party to. I’d only endorse the use of the police power in that regard insofar as not doing so would allow irreparable harm (or, okay, really expensive harm) to come to our common natural resources.
As for San Francisco…I don’t approve, but hey, localism!Report
“You could argue that,…”
You could but my point is, you don’t have to. Let’s say we stipulate that the enviros are not intending as an end to establish social control over the people in general. Even so, nowhere that I know of, either in practice or in principle, are they willing to renounce the police powers of the state where such powers are deployed to their ends.
“I’d only endorse the use of the police power in that regard insofar as not doing so would allow irreparable harm (or, okay, really expensive harm) to come to our common natural resources.”
No, I don’t think you’ve actually thought this through. All manner of enviro-minded statutes, regulations, prohibitions, etc. are being enforced by the police power of the state right now. To say that you don’t endorse that except in cases of irreparable or expensive harm would require huge rollback, and I don’t think you mean that.Report
Well it’s pretty clear now that we’re talking past each other, so let me just say that I think you’re mostly wrong when you say ” To say that you don’t endorse that except in cases of irreparable or expensive harm would require huge rollback”. Most of those statutes and regulations either prevent exactly that sort of harm, or are useless half-measures rife with regulatory capture that I would indeed like to rollback. Or worse, NIMBY rules that simply outsource pollution to places too poor to deal with it.Report
So local enviro-fascism is ok?Report
No, but it is if you really believe in “states rights”. Because the only way to stop it would be to call in the feds. Which I imagine you’d think was worse, no?Report
I don’t really see how it could be interpreted as anything other than a parody, but I was more annoyed by the LOLification of police brutality. The only thing missing was a taser.Report
Gladiator and Costner’s Hood? This call for serious reassessment of all that you’ve written before.Report
The Audi ad carried the same message as an ad for the A6 Wagon or something: fulfill some goal (be green / be practical) without the negative consequences (sacrificing fun). All of the green police stuff was a stand in for the increasingly confusing obligations that face yuppies trying to conform with expectations of greenness… buying offsets, drinking from the right cup, fair trade coffee, paper (errr, reusable) bags, etc, etc. The ad’s point is that you can still have fun and still burn gas at that and be green, whatever that means.
So far as that goes, I’m in league with Audi all the way. I’m as hardcore a cap-and-trader as you’ll find in the world, but when Al Gore’s outfit & NBC combine to convince Americans to turn off their lights for an hour (while still watching TV, oddly) as a prerequisite to being a responsible citizen, it’s getting ridiculous. Reducing GHG emissions will require actual sacrifice (spending more on a diesel engine and fuel and having less convenience in fuel availability in this case) and not token rituals.
At Whole Foods last week, there was a big display of “BIOWAFERS” … I have no idea what this even means, but it’s getting ridiculous.Report
At least the bag wasn’t marked “soylent green.”Report
Also, Robin Hood without tights is not Robin Hood. I mean he’s wearing armor and stuff in the ad… seriously? If it has flaming arrows and ahistorical explosions, I’m in, though.Report
Looks like the script for Robin Hood is written by Brian Helgeland, who crafted the under-appreciated A Knight’s Tale (containing the best ever joke in a movie about allegory), so I’m excited as well.Report
Yuck, I loathed A Knight’s Tale. The amusing idea of having tourney’s celebrated by the peasants like we celebrate modern sports was completely overwhelmed by the idiotic cliche script.Report
Hmm. I usually cringe at clichéd scripts, but A Knight’s Tale didn’t strike me as obviously trite. It was formulaic and predictable, sure, but I laughed and enjoyed myself nonetheless for that. The comic references to medieval literature and culture particularly cracked me up, and I thought it blended the medieval and modern very well. Songs by Queen mixed with bards reenacting the three denials of Peter. Postmodern genius!Report
Maybe it’s a lack of education on my part. The jokes must have flown right over my head.Report
That movie has long been a guilty pleasure of mine. The cast is partly what makes it for me, but the lit jokes were great too.Report
Listen up, planet-rapers! Just like the Minutemen pick up the slack when the Border Patrol can’t stop the brown-skinned, Spanish speaking hordes, the Green Team is here to stem the tide of Illegal Consumption that overwhelms the meager resources of the Environmental Police.
And for the record, I’m not anti consumer… I’m anti ILLEGAL consumer!Report
What the earth needs is a one-child policy.Report
As the great Canadian thinker, Diane Francis, suggested? Only the rub was she has two kids. I guess her liberalism is the “do as I say, not as I do” type.Report
I mostly meant for other people.Report
Of course it is for other people. Especially for the great unwashed masses as the band the “Upper Crust” would call them.Report
We need more of people like us. We just need to somehow retard the growth of them.Report
I think we have more than enough people like you already.Report
Surely once the wreckers are all placed in the gulag, society will finally be able to enter the golden age promised by the prophets.Report
Surely once the losers accept their rightful place as surplus to the needs of society, we can reach the golden age of freedom, and wealth.Report
Alpha children wear grey. They work much harder than we do, because they’re so frightfully clever. I’m really awfully glad I’m a Beta, because I don’t work so hard. And we are much better than the Gammas and Deltas. Gammas are stupid. They all wear green, and Delta children wear khaki. Oh no, I don’t want to play with Delta children. And Epsilons are still worse. They’re too stupid to be able to read or write. Besides they wear black, which is such a beastly color. I’m so glad I’m a Beta.Report
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=monyiOsoKxgReport
Wait, who gets to wear the powdered wigs?Report
The LOLcats.Report
Lolwin!Report
The best thing about the game last night is that, for a change we Louisianians get to cheer together instead of cry together. As for the ads, they are ads. Get a sense of Yuma.Report
Having just watched the ad, I’ll say the security state frisson actually bothered me a bit. I did like the use of Cheap Trick, however.Report
First Jonah Goldberg and now Andy McCarthy. You still haven’t been drawn and quartered for your heresy? You’re bold my friend 😛Report
If we’re going to run with it, I suggest we run with it.
“Greenshirts.”Report