Republican Clint Eastwood is catching all kinds of grief for making a commercial for Chrysler saying that "It's time for the second half in America." Of course this aired during the Super Bowl, so the slogan was logical.
But beyond that, it clearly tags with Chrysler's comeback. They are trying to sell cars, and their comeback story is a big part of their sales campaign.
I don't see what the big deal is about it, but some Republicans are upset about the commercial, claiming that it is really about President Obama's re-election campaign and alludes to a second term. That of course is hogwash; the commercial is about selling cars.
This kind of paranoid overreaction does however say a lot about the psyche of a lot of the Republicans who are blasting it. They know that President Obama took a big risk and bailed out Chrysler and General Motors. It has in fact been a smashing success. Unemployment in the city of Detroit has shot down from over 16% when he bailed out the two auto companies to about 9% today. The city is making a comeback, and the resurgent auto industry is the main reason why. Republicans, including Mitt Romney, criticized the President for the bailout at the time. So now that Detroit is back they can't avoid seeing the credit going to the President. Maybe they'd prefer that Chrysler and General Motors not show off their successes until after the election?
They also know that this has been a good week for the president. Following the January jobs report in which almost a quarter of a million net jobs were created, new polls by ABC News and Rasmussen both have Pesident Obama jumping out to a statistically significant lead against Mitt Romney.
Having gambled on the economy failing, and doing everyting they could to obstruct and not cooperate with the President and make it clear they were being uncooperative, the GOP is now on the verge of getting caught in a political no man's land.
So the truth is that Karl Rove, Mark Steyn and some of the other Republicans who have jumped all over Clint Eastwood about this, are spooked. If they hear in the phrase, "second half in America" an echo of Reagan's "morning in America," maybe it's less that the message was overtly political as it is that they know they are on the wrong side of an improving economy, and their negativism won't last until November.
Showing posts with label Super Bowl. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Super Bowl. Show all posts
Monday, February 06, 2012
Monday, February 05, 2007
Rush is a racist, and nothing brings that out like the NFL
Today while discussing the Super Bowl, Rush Limbaugh went into a tirade about how the media wanted Chicago Bears quarterback Rex Grossman to fail (which Grossman did, throwing a pair of late interceptions and adding two fumbles to make a strong case for why he should be Super Bowl MVP-- for the Colts.) It is true that last week the media kept asking whether Grossman might be the worst Super Bowl quarterback ever (which he also made a case for yesterday).
Rush then inserted two words that he used to explain why the media was (as he put it) 'rooting for Grossman to fail,' and those two words, almost inserted as an afterthought were 'white quarterback.' Of course words that people casually insert into a conversation often tell much more about who they really are and how they think than what they think through before they say.
His comment is in fact stupid on the face of it. Not only were the media simultaneously commenting on how superlatively good (white) Indianapolis quarterback Peyton Manning was (so that the notion that they root for white quarterbacks to fail is plainly absurd), but the reason for the negative questions about Rex was because we've seen the 'bad Rex' this year, and he has been really, really bad (as he showed the world last night). It was really a question of which Rex Grossman would show up-- he is inconsistent, and there is no way around it.
There was a racial angle on the game, to be sure, but it had nothing to do with the quarterback matchup-- the notion that black quarterbacks weren't as good as white quarterbacks was ended when Doug Williams and Washington won big almost twenty years ago. The racial angle yesterday was that two black coaches, Tony Dungy of Indianapolis and Lovie Smith of Chicago, both directed their clubs to the Super Bowl and Dungy became the first black coach to win a Super Bowl (which the NFL has done an outstanding job of ending racial hiring preferences across the league-- too bad that college football hasn't done the same).
What is really amazing is that this isn't the first time that Rush has talked about media coverage of a quarterback and added race into the equation. Recall that in 2003 he lost his job providing commentary on Monday Night Football by saying that Eagles' quarterback Donovan McNabb was 'overrated' because the media wanted to see a black quarterback succeed (again, that was over 15 years after Williams' performance in Super Bowl XXII had ended the race issue in regard to quarterbacks for anyone other than obdurate racists like Limbaugh shows himself to be).
Rush then inserted two words that he used to explain why the media was (as he put it) 'rooting for Grossman to fail,' and those two words, almost inserted as an afterthought were 'white quarterback.' Of course words that people casually insert into a conversation often tell much more about who they really are and how they think than what they think through before they say.
His comment is in fact stupid on the face of it. Not only were the media simultaneously commenting on how superlatively good (white) Indianapolis quarterback Peyton Manning was (so that the notion that they root for white quarterbacks to fail is plainly absurd), but the reason for the negative questions about Rex was because we've seen the 'bad Rex' this year, and he has been really, really bad (as he showed the world last night). It was really a question of which Rex Grossman would show up-- he is inconsistent, and there is no way around it.
There was a racial angle on the game, to be sure, but it had nothing to do with the quarterback matchup-- the notion that black quarterbacks weren't as good as white quarterbacks was ended when Doug Williams and Washington won big almost twenty years ago. The racial angle yesterday was that two black coaches, Tony Dungy of Indianapolis and Lovie Smith of Chicago, both directed their clubs to the Super Bowl and Dungy became the first black coach to win a Super Bowl (which the NFL has done an outstanding job of ending racial hiring preferences across the league-- too bad that college football hasn't done the same).
What is really amazing is that this isn't the first time that Rush has talked about media coverage of a quarterback and added race into the equation. Recall that in 2003 he lost his job providing commentary on Monday Night Football by saying that Eagles' quarterback Donovan McNabb was 'overrated' because the media wanted to see a black quarterback succeed (again, that was over 15 years after Williams' performance in Super Bowl XXII had ended the race issue in regard to quarterbacks for anyone other than obdurate racists like Limbaugh shows himself to be).
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