Forget the conventional wisdom that M.I.A. stole Madonna's thunder with her self-centered and self-indulgent middle finger salute carryover from Madonna's “Give Me All Your Luvin'” video during her halftime Super Bowl show.
Clint Eastwood, clearly, was the real culprit.
His stunning "It's Halftime In America" Super Bowl commercial--and yes, it was in fact a commercial, for Chrysler--made for the most serious post Super Bowl talk.
Most of it centered on whether the great American icon, a Republican and libertarian who considers himself to be fiscally conservative, socially liberal, and in support of environmental protections, was expressing thinly disguised support for Obama--if not secretly in cahoots with the President. After all, it was Obama's bailout of Detroit that was tacitly at the heart of the commercial.
"People are out of work, and they're hurting," Eastwood softly, hoarsely stated in the spot, "and they're all wondering what they're gonna do to make a comeback. And we're all scared because this isn't a game. The people of Detroit know a little something about this. They almost lost everything. But we all pulled together--now Motor City is fighting again."
Suddenly, Eastwood, who has said he can't remember ever voting for a Democrat for president, was being reviled by Republicans and embraced by Democrats.
White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer, tying Eastwood's ad in with Detroiter Eminem's Chrysler commercial from last Super Bowl, quickly tweeted: "Saving the America Auto Industry: Something Eminem and Clint Eastwood can agree on." Tampa Bay Times media critic Eric Deggans likewise went the Twitter route in his Obama innuendo: "As Clint Eastwood hails a Detroit that's up and fighting again in Chrysler ad, is Repub indirectly endorsing auto industry saver Obama?"
Ultraconservative columnist Michelle Malkin was dumbfounded in her Twitter take, and not happy about it: "Agh. WTH? Did I just see Clint Eastwood fronting an auto bailout ad???"
At Fox News, former Bush political adviser Karl Rove, "a huge fan" of Eastwood, took offense at what he saw as a victory of "Chicago-style politics"--a euphemistic term connoting Obama's political heritage.
"I thought it was an extremely well-done ad," said Rove, "but it is a sign of what happens when you have Chicago-style politics, and the president of the United States and his political minions are, in essence, using our tax dollars to buy corporate advertising and the best wishes of the management which has benefited by getting a bunch of our money that they'll never pay back."
Eastwood's manager Leonard Hirshan told New York that the ad was neither political nor commercial, that Eastwood himself rewrote the text in order to tell the country, "Get yourselves together--all of you--and make this a second half.”
"I think that Rove and everybody, if they’re sensible, would wonder why a longtime Republican and libertarian would do that,” said Hirshan, a Democrat, who saw the commercial, which never mentions Chrysler or cars but shows Chrsyler logos at the end, as more of a public service announcement. “Just think about that, how silly that is: It’s not like [the ad] was done by a left-winger, like Paul Newman in his day. It was done by a Republican, and he was doing it about America. There's not anything political to do with it whatsoever."
Republican strategist Mary Matalin agreed.
"It's certainly not a pro-Obama commercial; it's a car commercial," she told CNN's Wolf Blitzer.
Eastwood finally felt obliged to comment directly.
“I just want to say that the spin stops with you guys, and there is no spin in that ad. On this I am certain,” he said in a statement for Fox News. “I am certainly not politically affiliated with Mr. Obama. It was meant to be a message about job growth and the spirit of America. I think all politicians will agree with it. I thought the spirit was OK. If Obama or any other politician wants to run with the spirit of that ad, go for it.”
But "fair and balanced" Fox should have known this all along, especially "big Eastwood fan" Rove. If you've seen any of Eastwood's post-Dirty Harry films, that is, pretty much everything after the late 1980s or so, you know he's pretty even-handed: He can be the uncompromising "killer of women and children" in Unforgiven, yet in the same film ruefully declare: "It's a hell of a thing, killing a man. Take away all he's got and all he's ever gonna have."
He can humanely document the pivotal World War II Battle of Iwo Jima from both sides (Flags Of Our Fathers, Letters From Iwo Jima), and champion gender equality (Million Dollar Baby). And in Gran Torino, he plays a prejudiced retired Detroit auto worker who winds up befriending a Laotian American boy; Rove and the rest probably never saw that one, nor did they probably have much to say on Eastwood's recent support of gay marriage (“Don’t give me that sanctity crap!" he bellowed in GQ. "Just give everybody the chance to have the life they want”), though he did tell news site The Blaze last November that he was "a big hawk on cutting the deficit," and was against "the stimulus thing."
"We shouldn’t be bailing out the banks and car companies," he said. "If a CEO can’t figure out how to make his company profitable, then he shouldn’t be the CEO.”
Ironically, the tone of "It's Halftime In America," while evoking Ronald Reagan's "Morning in America" campaign commercials, most resembles a now-forgotten pop music curio, Canadian radio news director Byron MacGregor's No. 4 1974 hit "The Americans."
With the Detroit Symphony Orchestra playing "America The Beautiful" in the background, MacGregor recited a Toronto newspaper editorial written by Toronto newscaster Gordon Sinclair (whose own version was a lesser hit) extolling old-fashioned Yankee ingenuity and generosity--at a time when America, in the midst of the Vietnam War and the Nixon Watergate scandal, seemed all alone in the world and wholly unappreciated.
"When the Americans get out of this bind, as they will, who could blame them if they said to hell with the rest of the world," Sinclair wrote. "And I'm one Canadian who is damned tired of hearing them kicked around. They'll come out of this thing with their flag high, and when they do, theyre entitled to thumb their noses at the lands that are gloating over their present trouble."
It's a safe bet that Karl Rove and his ilk, who now, thumb their noses at Eastwood, took great comfort from "The Americans."
Subscribe to my examiner.com pages and follow me on Twitter!
Comments