Clint Eastwood's "Halftime in America" Superbowl Ad, Plus Two Effective Video Responses

Gary North

Feb. 18, 2012

If you saw the Chrysler's PR ad, with Clint Eastwood as the front man, you may have done a double-take. Here is Clint, the libertarian, doing a sugar-coated promo for Obama's bailout of Chrysler and GM. This is Josie Wales. This is the guy who ran for Mayor of Carmel so he could get the local town council to legalize eating ice cream in public.

Superbowl ads this year cost $3.5 million for 30 seconds. This is two minutes long. We know this: the ad sold no cars. It was a puff piece for Detroit's automakers: Bailout Nation, Crony Capitalism, and UAW life support. It was what's wrong with America.

Next, Dave Wooten got to work. He is the guy who does voice-over parodies on Rush Limbaugh's show. He is very funny. He used humor to target the ad. He comments on Madonna first. She gets her comeuppance. Then Clint gets his. But he makes a mistake. He thinks GM (Government Motors) paid for it. I can see why he was confused. This was a puff-piece ad. It did not identify a product. It was, from the shareholder's point of view, a total waste of money that coiuld have been invested in new equipment or dividends for them. But it made Chrysler executives feel all tingly and proud. That is what Crony Capitalism fosters: happy executives.

I thought the next response was better. It takes some of the images and uses them differently. It takes the Obama bailout is the heart of what's great about America malarkey and re-structures it. The message is completely different. It is freedom, not bailouts, that is the heart of America.

Sadly, it's both. America has two hearts, two brains, two visions. We are a Siamese twin nation. But the twins are no longer cooperating. The welfare state twin is draining the strength out of the production twin. They are both going to die if there is no operation to separate them.

We need an operation. One of them will have to die: the welfare state twin.

We are going to get thus operation. I call it the Great Default. It's coming. Washington's checks will bounce.

Government Motors' America is going to die. If is doesn't, this nation will become one gigantic Detroit.