Assvertising

[Content Note: Classism; bootstraps; privilege; disablist language.]

I haven't seen this advert myself, but Shaker KatherineSpins sent it to me with a note that it's airing a lot during the Olympics. Everything—every. single. thing.—about this commercial for the Cadillac ELR is gross.


Actor Neal McDonough, a thin, white, middle-aged man starts off standing in front of a pool in "his" backyard, then walks throughout a luxuriously appointed mansion as he talks, eventually going into "his" bedroom then coming out dressed in an expensive suit before getting into a shiny new black Cadillac. The mansion and the car have all the highest-end tech toys and finishes, and "his" family, including thin, white, kyriarchetypically attractive children and wife, are featured as if to suggest they are his beautiful, fancy property, just like everything else.

The dialogue, over these images:

Why do we work so hard? For what? For this? [gestures at pool] For stuff? Other countries, they work, they stroll home, they stop by the café, they take August off. Off. Why aren't you like that? Why aren't we like that? Because we're crazy, driven, hardworking believers, that's why. [high-fives his daughter as he walks by her] 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, and you know what we got? Bored! So we left. Got a car up there, left the keys in it, do you know why? 'Cuz 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. N'est-ce pas?

[winks]

Good fucking grief.

I could spend the next six days of my life detailing everything I hate about this classist, nationalistic, privileged, contemptible piece of bootstraps bullshittery, but I'mma just turn it over to you in comments and let you have at it, since I've nothing to say about this rancid slop that I haven't already said about conservative ideology, the "American Dream," prosperity gospel, and other associated Gordon Gecko garbage a thousand times before. Barf almighty.