Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Nonsense PC controversy of the day
Mercedes-Benz is getting grief for this ad. Without clicking through the link below for the answer, post a comment explaining contemporary American "sensitivity" to our ignorant German friends.
Answer here. Dang, that is some dumbness.
17 Comments:
By 
, at
Wed Sep 29, 01:01:00 PM:
"Everybody should be a winner; how dare you insult those who cannot put their hands over their heads, or those who have not prostituted themselves to big business enough to afford one of your pollution-belching cars."
By , at
Wed Sep 29, 01:04:00 PM:
[clicks link]
Dang. Missed it.
I had no idea that the stupid went quite that deep.
By , at
Wed Sep 29, 01:21:00 PM:
It's not being stupid. You just don't understand. MLK is **our** MLK.
By , at
Wed Sep 29, 01:46:00 PM:
I guess I'm ignorant too. I thought it was a decent commercial.
By , at
Wed Sep 29, 02:02:00 PM:
It showed Cassius Clay when it should have showed Muhamed Ali? wild guess
By , at
Wed Sep 29, 02:02:00 PM:
I guess I'm even more ignorant. I thought it was a decent commercial, too, as far as commercials go. But I also do not see the PC-wrongness of using footage in the public domain to make a commercial point.
Certainly I hear the bleatings and mewlings of the PC NAZIs (although my guess answering TigerHawk's challenge also was wrong), but I do not understand their beef beyond it being the whining and wasted energy of those who are more interested in finding an excuse to be offended than they are in dealing with real problems.
Eric Hines
By , at
Wed Sep 29, 02:46:00 PM:
There are few greedier than King's family. They were well paid for use of MLK's name.
By , at
Wed Sep 29, 03:28:00 PM:
Isn't that marketing 101: build in some mild controversy for free publicity?
By 
JPMcT, at
Wed Sep 29, 04:09:00 PM:
I don't see anything to be offended about.
As such, I did not go to the site to find out what was offensive since that only encourages the morons....(and, of course, I ould care less why one would take offense at this)
By Stack Trace, at
Wed Sep 29, 04:49:00 PM:
Dang. I'm going to buy a Benz now, just to make those whiners *even madder*.
This commercial reminds me of an article about 'triumph displays', where a 'triumph display' is that victorious gesture of throwing your hands in the air, pushing your chest out, and lifting your face a bit. Apparently, it's a pretty deeply hardwired behavior, so much so that blind-from-birth athletes (who have never seen the same display) do it, too.
To me, this commercial just taps into that victorious feeling. I like it. (I can kind of see why it annoys those people who really don't believe in achievement or pride.) Wasn't King's triumph a triumph worth celebrating? Or is King a *black* triumph over white people? Yeah, I can see why this commercial bugs some people. Good!!
By Assistant Village Idiot, at
Wed Sep 29, 05:51:00 PM:
I didn't catch it. Hade to look.
None of the other gesturers were trying to sell a Mercedes at the time either. Why single out MLK?
Oh, I get it. As one of the historical Rorschach Tests for liberals, MLK is assumed to agree with everything they think.
wv: ingsoc. Sometimes the coincidences are just too much.
By Chuck from Tacoma, at
Wed Sep 29, 07:32:00 PM:
Somewhere else, somebody was bitching about the car and rescue if the car lands on its top.
Anyway, I think all black people should boycotte Mercedes.
How dare them share MLK's joy.
By , at
Thu Sep 30, 12:08:00 AM:
Had to peek at the answer and then watch the ad 3x before I noticed the Dr.MLK2 spot.
Yes, this is a story of exploitation.
By Zheing, at
Thu Sep 30, 09:33:00 AM:
Nice video thanks for sharing with us.
CCNA
By , at
Fri Oct 01, 05:33:00 PM:
MLK is in there, but you have to look pretty hard. Is that really Bernstein? It looks like a clip from Young Frankenstein.
By , at
Fri Oct 01, 07:17:00 PM:
And another thing. Do I think anyone in the market for this car is likely to find this ad offensive? No. Indeed, I could even be convinced that and the Ali segment were included to appeal to professional athletes. To put it another way, this car and this ad are targeted at people who spill more money than the kind of people likely to be offended make.
By , at
Sat Oct 02, 05:04:00 AM:
I don't think the ad is offensive (oops, silly me - there will always be people who find everything offensive) so much as silly. It reminds me of those goofy Apple ads years ago featuring the likes of Albert Einstein and Amelia Earhart and others, none of whom had anything at all to do with the Mac and everything to do with Steve Jobs' pathetic need to be a messiah.
