New York Times Melts Down Over Miami

Update: Read the bit below about Prudential and Iraq, then check out Michelle for the video. I heard the commercial live and never once thought it sounded like Iraq.

If it's possible for the New York Times to jump the proverbial shark, they went one better. Given this, it would appear they jumped right out of an ever rising sea due to global warming and landed in a rest home by a beach in Iraq:

No commercial that appeared last night during Super Bowl XLI directly addressed Iraq, unlike a patriotic spot for Budweiser beer that ran during the game two years ago. But the ongoing war seemed to linger just below the surface of many of this year’s commercials.

More than a dozen spots celebrated violence in an exaggerated, cartoonlike vein that was intended to be humorous, but often came across as cruel or callous.

You see, those commercials weren't slick messages often containing bottles launched from Madison Avenue and designed to sell products like beer at millions of dollars a pop. They were all metaphors for a nation deflated, if not defeated, and dangerously obsessed with Bush's misguided war.

The problem with the spot, created internally at Prudential, was that whenever the announcer said, “a rock” — invoking the Prudential logo, the rock of Gibraltar — it sounded as if he were saying, yes, “Iraq.”

Okay, is it just me, or does it sound like the editors at the NY Times must have taped the Superbowl commercials and are now playing them backwards to distill the hidden message buried deep within?

It was as if Madison Avenue were channeling Doc in “West Side Story,” the gentle owner of the candy store in the neighborhood that the two street gangs, the Jets and Sharks, fight over. “Why do you kids live like there’s a war on?” Doc asks plaintively. (Well, Doc, this time, there is.)

During other wars, Madison Avenue has appealed to a yearning for peace. That was expressed in several Super Bowl spots evocative of “Hilltop,” the classic Coca-Cola commercial from 1971, when the Vietnam War divided a world that needed to be taught to sing in perfect harmony.

Coca-Cola borrowed pages from its own playbook with two whimsical spots for Coca-Cola Classic, “Happiness Factory” and “Video Game,” that were as sweet as they were upbeat. The commercials, by Wieden & Kennedy, provided a welcome counterpoint to the martial tone of the evening.

Those who wish the last four years of history had never happened could find solace in several commercials that used the device of ending an awful tale by revealing it was only a dream.

Good grief, they have finally gone totally insane.

Comments

[scarshapedstar]

I thought the "and to all the other teams..." ad with 5 minutes remaining was pretty harsh, what with the crying Saints fan appearing first and the funeral jazz in the background.

[Jonathan]

I was over at my daughter's house, they had the superbowl on but no one was really watching. The only two ads I saw seemed gratuitously violent. One was a bunch of people slapping the hell out of each other and the other was a heart getting pummeled and kidnapped in a van by diabetes, high blood pressure, cholesterol etc.

I heard the halftime show and it sounded pretty good and I was told the choreography was excellent. I was on their computer, of course.

[Dan Riehl]

I phased in and out of the game - caught enough of it. If you want to view all the commercials, they are up at Hot Air.

[MCPO Airdale]

I thought in the Bud ad with the dog, someone in the background yelled, "I buried Paul!" or maybe it was, "I am the Walrus!"

Naw, it was "Buy our beer!"

[Purple Avenger]

Paul is dead. Trust me ;->

[Don Surber]

If you look carefully at the Prudential I-Rock you can see the oppressive hand of George Bush clubbing the pained faces of Iraqis into submission.

Now to play the commercial against "The Longest Day" movie ...

[Marc]

This guy HAS to share office space somewhere with Willaim Arkin of the "The Troops should Support Us" fame at the Washington Post. ....They're coming to take me away ... There coming to take me away ....

[Mark Jaeger]

The dirty little secret is that if the NYT simply ran the Lite beer commercials backwards, they could hear Bush and Cheney arguing:

"Tastes GREAT!
The hell you say! LESS FILLING!"

Ergo, the NYT headline for the next day:

SECRET TAPE REVEALS BITTER POLICY DISPUTES BETWEEN BUSH AND CHENEY

[daveinboca]

Gosh, I thought I heard "Tenet outted Valerie Plame!" in Espanol in the background of the lion's talking about how to pronounce Taco Bell delectibles. Maybe if I listen to it backwards, it'll deliver the whole message in English. By the way, the NYT has related the murder of Tupak by Shugg to Global Warming, so Prudential being "a rock" is not a stretch.

[The Liberal Avenger]

I remember a bunch of wingnuts getting pretty lathered up over a "crescent shape" that allegedly pointed towards Mecca in the proposed United 93 memorial.

Now THAT'S crazy!