Actor Clint Eastwood is used to dodging bullets in his movies (he always wins in the end of course) and now he’s taking some heavy flak from Republicans in the US for alleged pro-Obama sentiments in his Chrysler Super Bowl ad from Wieden+Kennedy.
President Barack Obama bailed out most of the US auto industry (and Detroit) with taxpayers’ money in the credit crunch. Chrysler, now majority-owned by Fiat, and General Motors were the two beneficiaries.
So is Eastwood’s paean to Detroit really praise for Obama? And does his reference to the “second half” really refer to Obama’s pursuit of a second term Democratic presidency?
Ref the first point the answer might be yes. On the second, hardly. Rather embarrassingly, Eastwood spoke out against bailouts for car companies and banks a while ago. But, as someone in the Fox clip observes, the copy was written by Wieden+Kennedy. Are they secret Democrats in Portland?
The media got the political take on the Eastwood Superbowl “It’s halftime in America” ad completely wrong… The ad was created by Weiden and Kennedy- arguably the most pro-Obama creative ad agency on the planet… These were the same folks that created the “Dunk on McCain” Air Obama Nike shoes in 2008.
http://hypebeast.com/2008/09/obama-force-one/
Mark Fitzloff, the executive director of creativity this past year
contributed heavily in a piece in Harper’s whose stated goal was how you
create an Ad specifically for the Superbowl to sell the government
http://harpers.org/archive/2011/02/0083294
I think Mark Fitzloff is a clearly an Obama loving genius who is also a master of misdirection… Mark even sometimes tweets his disapprove of the GOP. (“markfitzloff Mark Fitzloff There’s gridlock, and then there’s extortion. “GOP says it’ll block bills until tax cuts extended.” http://tinyurl.com/2up9no2 1 Dec 10 “)
Mark also stated that getting Obama to mention his last Chrysler ad in a speech in Detroit:
“…; the fact that the president quoted the spot in one of his addresses…its things like that are above and beyond anything else that we have done.”
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xmu2qp_mark-fitzl...
Obviously, Mark sees serious advertising advantages with tie-ins to the Obama presidency. What better way than to get his hidden political message across than to make fiscal conservative Clint Eastwood the mouthpiece of his subtext? The mainstream media was completely and utterly taken in assuming that Eastwood created the piece and that it had no intentional subtext. Real reporters should find out who actually wrote the script and if there was overt discussion of the “second half” tying in to “4 more years” Obama.