Diana Ladd at the Next City blog admired the craftmanship that went into Dodge’s Super Bowl ad that used an old speech by radio legend Paul Harvey titled “God Made a Farmer” to promote its own line of pickup trucks.
Harvey, of course, wasn’t talking about pickup trucks at the time — but that didn’t stop Dodge. And it left Diana a little blue. Excerpt:
And yet the ad, like the one about soldiers for Jeep, conflated the merits of people with those of cars. Which seems a bit sad for 2013, when in the past six months climate change has reared its ugly head and begged us to change our consumption economy for something a bit more sustainable. And the nostalgic imagery — as if we only believe in farmers and soldiers to represent the best of humanity, and as if buying a car is a noble act — started to offend me.
So she made the above video about transit, using still photos from across the planet. If you look close, I believe there’s a quick shot of the Blue Line in there.
Hat tip: L.A. Streetsblog’s Tanya Snyder for posting this earlier.
Categories: Policy & Funding
Lighten up, “Neglected Bus Rider.” The concept of “God” for many of us imperfect humans is expanded past the Biblical sense. And even then, the Bible was written by humans, and translated by humans. Maybe we can meet in the middle and agree on “God inspired transit.” I for one, after 66 years on earth, marvel every day at human ingenuity, even tho we often fall short at executing great concepts. The concept of God, and of Perfection, drives us to improve ourselves, and our inventions. And the concept of forgiveness allows us to get up after failure, and try again. We need a concept of perfection, or perfectability – and we need a concept of forgiveness, which inspires us to make amends, and make improvements.
If there was a “god” involved in transit creation, then its end-product in and of itself, is a reason why ATHEISM IS REENFORCED!
Metro needs to get permission and start running this on all television networks! I was speechless, this is beautiful. We must educate Angelinos and sell public transporttion. This could be used as an excellent advertising tool and a great way to generate support, possibly support in the form of local tax revenue.