Armed Polite Society
Main Forums => The Roundtable => Topic started by: Doggy Daddy on February 07, 2010, 11:45:27 PM
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Okay, am I the only one annoyed by the "Green Police" commercial that Audi had during teh Souper Bowel?
At first, I though they were making fun of the everything green sentiment that's all the rage right now. I was impressed with their bravery. I laughed at their wit. Then I realized they were serious. :facepalm:
I do believe I'll never buy an Audi. Just because of this commercial.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wq58zS4_jvM (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wq58zS4_jvM)
DD
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I thought it was funny. I think they did, too.
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I do believe I'll never buy an Audi. Just because of this commercial.
You're not the only one.
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Did it occur to anyone that it was a bad idea for a German car company to adopt the name of a nazi police organization for their commercial?
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Did it occur to anyone that it was a bad idea for a German car company to adopt the name of a nazi police organization for their commercial?
Huh?? What does "Green Police" have to do with the Nazi police organizations? I didn't notice anything like SS or Gestapo or Stasi (yes, I know that's East German not Nazi, just being thorough) in that commercial.
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I thought it was funny. I think they did, too.
I thought it was funny... at first. And I do think they also thought it was funny. In a "We're morally and ecologically superior to those funny uncaring slobs, so buy our car and be superior too" kind of way.
And for the record, I'm a big fan of The Police. I will continue to listen to their music and buy their cds.
DD
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Okay, am I the only one annoyed by the "Green Police" commercial that Audi had during teh Souper Bowel?
At first, I though they were making fun of the everything green sentiment that's all the rage right now. I was impressed with their bravery. I laughed at their wit. Then I realized they were serious. :facepalm:
I do believe I'll never buy an Audi. Just because of this commercial.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wq58zS4_jvM (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wq58zS4_jvM)
DD
The Green Police add I saw was for Volkswagen. They were doing this "PunchBug" (we used to call it "SlugBug, and then only for "Bugs"), and yes, it was annoying.
Edited to correct for mistakes caused by my Redneck Teleprompter
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The Green Police add I saw was for Volkswagen. They were doing this "PunchBug" (we used to call it "SlugBug, and then only for "Bugs"), and yes, it was annoying.
But I did laugh when Stevie Wonder slugged the guy for the red one.
DD
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Huh?? What does "Green Police" have to do with the Nazi police organizations? I didn't notice anything like SS or Gestapo or Stasi (yes, I know that's East German not Nazi, just being thorough) in that commercial.
The Ordnungspolizei ("normal" police) had green uniforms, so were informally called the Grüne Polizei, or the "Green Police"
It's reaching pretty far, and pretty silly, in my opinion. [EDIT: TO get upset about the ad and ties to Nazi Germany]
It's true that they were primarily the "regular" police, not the Gestapo or Schutzstaffel, but they had plenty to do with sending jews to their deaths, too.
(https://armedpolitesociety.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.diggerhistory.info%2Fimages%2Funiforms4%2FPolizei-parade-shako_small.jpg&hash=e6a208d123b6376186d48ede3afdafdec6d432f6)
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It's reaching pretty far, and pretty silly, in my opinion.
What is?
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What is?
Getting upset about that ad and ties to Nazi Germany. I clarified a bit.
It's obviously a humorous ad, not meant to be anti semetic or pro-nazi in any way, at least to me.
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I loved the VW commercial....
....but the Audi commercial rubbed me the wrong way, too....and I like Audi. The whole "Green Police" thing reminded me of my Birchwood Casey Shoot'n'See Targets....expensive to make, easy to see, and react well when I shoot at them.... ;)
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The Ordnungspolizei ("normal" police) had green uniforms, so were informally called the Grüne Polizei, or the "Green Police"
Das wußte ich nicht.
Was the uniform color and/or term common before the Nazis, or was this something that started with them?
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Getting upset about that ad and ties to Nazi Germany. I clarified a bit.
It's obviously a humorous ad, not meant to be anti semetic or pro-nazi in any way, at least to me.
I'm looking at Azrael's post, and I don't see him being upset or calling anyone a Nazi. He just seems to be pointing out a possible blunder.
Did it occur to anyone that it was a bad idea for a German car company to adopt the name of a nazi police organization for their commercial?
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The Green Police ad was sad, because that's where the Greenies are going. Plenty of them would love to kick in your door and take you to jail for using Incadesant bulbs....
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The Green Police ad was sad, because that's where the Greenies are going.
Yes! Right!
That line should have been part of my OP. Thanks, JJ.
DD
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The Green Police ad was sad, because that's where the Greenies are going. Plenty of them would love to kick in your door and take you to jail for using Incadesant bulbs....
Maybe we can combine them with the spelling SWAT team and they'll sort of balance out.
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Actually, "normal" police is something of a loose translation. Ordnung, or order, has something of a cultural meaning to Germans. "Alles in ordnung" is a popular expression referring to, "everything as it should be". My dad, who grew up in that era, used to often finish lectures to me when I was a kid with "alles in ordnung", as in "straighten up and fly right -- OR DER VIL BE CONSECVENCES!!!"
As to the green police -- funny commercial, but somewhat too close to home for this CA boy. The enviros here would see nothing out of order with fining someone $5000 for throwing a plastic bottle in a trash can instead of a recycle bin.
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I thought the ad was funny...to the point when I realized that somewhere, some greenie was screaming "YES!" at the television. Don't blame Audi for that, though.
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The Green Police ad was sad, because that's where the Greenies are going. Plenty of them would love to kick in your door and take you to jail for using Incadesant bulbs....
Exactly my thoughts. The ad was funny in concept, but depressing in the unintended and underlying truth.
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But I did laugh when Stevie Wonder slugged the guy for the red one.
DD
That made the whole commercial. "How did you do that?" (I laughed). =D
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If the premise weren't so plausible it would be funny. After ashtray busts and school kids being taken into custody for drawing pictures of guns, though, the idea of green police is too real.
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Ashtray busts?
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You can have my 100 watt bulbs when you pry them from my burned fingers :P
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Ashtray busts?
Not long after NYC passed the smoking ban, the owner of a convenience store was fined $6000. The police came in for some unrelated reason, found an ashtray under the front counter that had some ashes in it, and arrested him.
There was another person arrested for having an ashtray, but I'm drawing a blank on the story right now.
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You can have my 100 watt bulbs when you pry them from my burned fingers :P
You've only got two years to stock up on 'em.
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The Audi commercial
makes me want to set fire to a rain forest, then start a tire fire makes me want to start a tire fire in a rain forest .... I care about the Earth and want to conserve and so forth, but I am so sick and freakin' tired of being told what to do, "for my own good", "for the earth", "For the children". It's way beyond being out of hand.
fixed it, per Brimic's suggestion.
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If the premise weren't so plausible it would be funny. After ashtray busts and school kids being taken into custody for drawing pictures of guns, though, the idea of green police is too real.
Pretty much this.
The Audi commercial makes me want to set fire to a rain forest, then start a tire fire.... I care about the Earth and want to conserve and so forth, but I am so sick and freakin' tired of being told what to do, "for my own good", "for the earth", "For the children". It's way beyond being out of hand.
Also this.
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Thanks, DD.
I knew when I was watching that commercial that something was not right!
Somebody in the Marketing department is historically challenged, or is very crafty.
Jamie
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Grenztruppen der DDR? :O
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I did like the anteater. That was cute.
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Not very funny to me. I didn't watch the Superbowl, so this is the first I've seen the ad. I guess I can see where some people would see it as funny, but I just don't. It looks too much like what I think is really in store for the country. Maybe not the over the tops raids for not properly disposing of orange peels, but it would not surprise me if things like having incandescent bulbs or throwing away batteries became real crimes. It's not gonna happen over night, but a lot of the "infractions" in that ad are already in the works. Like others have said, that ad itself is "harmless", but I know there are people out there who are truly hoping this happens. That is why this as is terrible.
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The Audi commercial makes me want to set fire to a rain forest, then start a tire fire....
Come on, use your head! Start the tire fire in the rainforest to set it ablaze. Tires burn very hot. :angel:
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Das wußte ich nicht.
Was the uniform color and/or term common before the Nazis, or was this something that started with them?
Not sure, but I know that green is still a prominent color of many German police agencies today. many Autobahnpolizei (highway patrol, if you couldn't guess) cars feature green, for instance. It's a lot like Blue is for our guys, so I guess it's a long running cultural thing.
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I would have thought that Green means environmentalism to most Germans. What with their big Green Party and all.
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I give AUDI the benefit of the doubt in regards to the ad's intention(humorously pointing out their car's award, etc). However, it's only funny because - unlike, say, random OSHA/EPA inspections of shops, plants, work sites etc. by unelected officials who wield great power(with whom it is difficult, time-consuming, and very expensive to argue) - it's not happening *yet*.
They HAD to know that it'd rub some people the wrong way, being that the whole climate-change thing is big news all over the world, and they had to have made the choice to run it anyway.
As I said, I'll give them the benefit of the doubt, but I think it's kind of poor taste, for lack of a better way to put it, and a bit too "edgy".
I fail to see the Nazi connection. I understand how the connection could be made, but... honestly, I doubt that anyone in the advertising/marketing/image department at AUDI is old enough to make that connection. Besides, what else would they use for a chorus? "The Ecologically Responsible Practices Police" doesn't have the same catchy ring :P
(Edited for clarity)
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Okay, am I the only one annoyed by the "Green Police" commercial that Audi had during teh Souper Bowel?
At first, I though they were making fun of the everything green sentiment that's all the rage right now. I was impressed with their bravery. I laughed at their wit. Then I realized they were serious. :facepalm:
I do believe I'll never buy an Audi. Just because of this commercial.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wq58zS4_jvM (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wq58zS4_jvM)
DD
+1 *MILLION*.
It was funny, but at the same time, I can see it happening, and I hate the idea that it might. And Audi will never get my business, either.
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I had a couple Audi's that I bought used quite a few years ago. Nice cars. I could never afford one now.
Are the green helmets the same targets as the blue ones?...chris3
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More Audis for me, then.
Loved my 200 Turbo Quattro, and my senior translational scientist has a new V10 Quattro that she takes me to lunch in. Woo-hoo!
Kudos to Audi for having the huevos to make that commercial, IHMO. The ad was to me totally tongue-in-cheek, I LOL'ed when we saw it during the Super Bowl.
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Not very funny to me. I didn't watch the Superbowl, so this is the first I've seen the ad. I guess I can see where some people would see it as funny, but I just don't. It looks too much like what I think is really in store for the country. Maybe not the over the tops raids for not properly disposing of orange peels, but it would not surprise me if things like having incandescent bulbs or throwing away batteries became real crimes. It's not gonna happen over night, but a lot of the "infractions" in that ad are already in the works. Like others have said, that ad itself is "harmless", but I know there are people out there who are truly hoping this happens. That is why this as is terrible.
I think it actually works in our favor. If people see now how absurd that seems, hopefully it will wake them up to where we could be heading... hopefully.
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Call me a fuddyduddy, but i don't find the celebration of idealized eco-facism to be very funny. ???
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I think it actually works in our favor. If people see now how absurd that seems, hopefully it will wake them up to where we could be heading... hopefully.
A gay, mentally challenged, biracial, fat male cheerleader is claiming discrimination, and you think absurdity is a deterrent to anything?
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A gay, mentally challenged, biracial, fat male cheerleader is claiming discrimination, and you think absurdity is a deterrent to anything?
That's crazy talk!
Here is a Jonah Goldberg column on the ad:
http://article.nationalreview.com/print/?q=NzU3MmQ2MjM5YjBjYzUxZWFkYmU4YWFhZGJiZDUyYTc=
Audi’s Gorewellian Super Bowl Ad
The ad is absurd, of course, but not nearly as absurd as Audi thinks.
I watched the Super Bowl in the chilled air of the G.F.I.S.Z. (that’s Goldberg Family Ice Station Zebra). Here in Washington, we haven’t seen this much snow since at least 1922. The blizzard of 2010 took out our electricity for a day. Digging out from “snowmageddon” was nothing less than an Augean challenge, though my lower back is, alas, less than Herculean. Meanwhile, snow canceled my daughter’s seventh birthday party Saturday and her school Monday. We’re slated for another foot by Wednesday.
Suffice it to say I’m not panicking about global warming right now.
Perhaps that’s why I was bemused and intrigued by Audi’s Super Bowl ad.
Audi’s “Green Police” (available on YouTube) depicts an America where citizens are arrested — roughly — for even minor environmental infractions. A man at the supermarket asks for a plastic shopping bag and has his head slammed against the counter as he’s cuffed by a Green Police officer. “You picked the wrong day to mess with the ecosystem, plastic boy,” quips the cop. When officers find a battery in the wrong suburban garbage bin, one big cop yells, “Battery! Let’s go! Take the house!”
It’s a fascinating commercial. They even got Cheap Trick to rerecord “Dream Police” as “Green Police.” But just as the satire becomes enjoyable, the message changes. Until the pitch for Audi intrudes, you’d think it was a fun parody from a right-wing, free-market outfit about the pending dystopian environmental police state.
The pitch involves an “eco roadblock.” A man driving an Audi A3 TDI is singled out by an inspector. “We’ve got a TDI here,” he says. “Clean diesel,” he adds approvingly.
“You’re good to go, sir,” the cops inform the driver. The smiling Audi owner accelerates to happiness on the open road. The screen fades to black and the tagline appears — “Green has never felt so right.”
So, instead of some healthy don’t-tread-on-me mockery, the moral of the story is that we should welcome our new green overlords and, if we know what’s good for us, surrender to the New Green Order.
Some eco-bloggers disliked the ad because it reinforces the association of undemocratic statism and PC bullying with environmentalism. Perhaps that’s why the New York Times dubbed it “misguided.”
Meanwhile, some conservatives didn’t like it because it makes light of what they believe is actually happening. After all, in America and Europe the list of environmental crimes is growing at an almost exponential rate. The ad is absurd, of course, but not nearly as absurd as Audi thinks.
What was Audi’s intent? Presumably, to sell cars.
“The ad only makes sense if it’s aimed at people who acknowledge the moral authority of the green police,” writes Grist magazine’s David Roberts on the Huffington Post. The target audience, according to Roberts, is men who want to “do the right thing.” He’s certainly right that the ad isn’t aimed at people (whom he childishly mocks as “*derogatory term deleted*”) who worry that their liberties are being eroded.
But the message is hardly “do the right thing.”
To me, the target demographic is a certain subset of spineless, upscale white men (all the perps in the ad are affluent white guys) who just want to go with the flow. In that sense, the Audi ad has a lot in common with those execrable MasterCard commercials. Targeting the same demographic, those ads depicted hapless fathers being harangued by their children to get with the environmental program. MasterCard’s tagline: “Helping Dad become a better man: Priceless.”
The difference is that MasterCard’s ads were earnest, creepy, diabetes-inducing treacle. Audi’s ad not only fails to invest the greens with moral authority, it concedes that the carbon cops are out of control and power-hungry (in a postscript scene, the Green Police pull over real cops for using Styrofoam cups). But, because resistance is futile when it comes to the eco-Borg, you might as well get the best car you can.
It will be interesting to see whether the ad actually sells cars. The premise only works if you take it as a given that this Gorewellian nightmare is inevitable. But the commercials arrive at precisely the moment when that inevitability is unraveling like an old pair of hemp socks. The global-warming industry is imploding from scientific scandals, inconvenient weather, economic anxiety, and surging popular skepticism (according to a Pew Research Center survey released in January, global warming ranks 21st out of 21 in terms of the public’s priorities).
This week, I don’t want a car that will get past the Green Gestapo. I’m looking for something that can power through the frozen tundra separating me from the supermarket.
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"Gorewellian": I like it. =D
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This week, I don’t want a car that will get past the Green Gestapo. I’m looking for something that can power through the frozen tundra separating me from the supermarket.
Somebody should do a remake, with a Ford F-350 Super Duty blasting through the roadblock :laugh:
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So, instead of some healthy don’t-tread-on-me mockery, the moral of the story is that we should welcome our new green overlords and, if we know what’s good for us, surrender to the New Green Order.
That's what bothers me about it. I like Tallpine's idea.
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Somebody should do a remake, with a Ford F-350 Super Duty blasting through the roadblock :laugh:
Language NSFW. (http://smallestminority.blogspot.com/2010/02/quote-of-day-green-police-edition.html)
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Language NSFW. (http://smallestminority.blogspot.com/2010/02/quote-of-day-green-police-edition.html)
So, that would be the "E-Effer350?"
=D
DD
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Language NSFW. (http://smallestminority.blogspot.com/2010/02/quote-of-day-green-police-edition.html)
I'd rather have the seats covered in Polar Bear fur....
Ad tagline for the Ford E-Effer350 - “Gaia – the Original MILF.”
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Somebody should do a remake, with a Ford F-350 Super Duty blasting through the roadblock
I'd probably buy one then :laugh:
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Mark Steyn: Getting our groupthink on
A man asks for a plastic bag at the supermarket checkout. Next thing you know, his head's slammed against the counter, and he's being cuffed by the Green Police. "You picked the wrong day to mess with the ecosystem, plastic boy," sneers the enviro-cop, as the perp is led away. Cut to more Green Police going through your trash, until they find ... a battery! "Take the house!" orders the eco-commando. And we switch to a roadblock on a backed-up interstate, with the Green Police prowling the lines of vehicles to check they're in environmental compliance.
If you watched the Super Bowl, you most likely saw this commercial. As my comrade Jonah Goldberg noted, up until this point you might have assumed it was a fun message from a libertarian think-tank warning of the barely veiled totalitarian tendencies of the eco-nanny state. Any time now, you figure, some splendidly contrarian type Рperhaps Clint lui-m̻me in his famous Gran Torino Рwill come roaring through, flipping the bird at the stormtroopers and blowing out their tires for good measure. But, instead, the Greenstapo stumble across an Audi A3 TDI. "You're good to go," they tell the driver, and, with the approval of the state enforcers, he meekly pulls out of the stalled traffic and moves off. Tagline: "Green has never felt so right."
So the message from Audi isn't "You are a free man. Don't bend to the statist bullies," but "Resistance is futile. You might as well get with the program."
Strange. Not so long ago, car ads prioritized liberty. Your vehicle opened up new horizons: Gitcha motor running, head out on the highway, looking for adventure ... . To sell dull automobiles to people who lived in suburban cul de sacs, manufacturers showed them roaring round hairpin bends, deep into forests, splashing through rivers, across the desert plain, invariably coming to rest on the edge of a spectacular promontory on the roof of the world offering a dizzying view of half the planet. Freedom!
But now Audi flogs you its vehicles on the basis that it's the most convenient way to submit to arbitrary state authority. Forty years ago, when they first began selling over here, it's doubtful the company would have considered this either a helpful image for a German car manufacturer or a viable pitch to the American male.
But times change. As Jonah Goldberg pointed out, all the men in the Audi ad are the usual befuddled effete new-male eunuchs that infest all the other commercials. The sort of milksop who'll buy the TDI and then, when the Green Police change their regulatory requirements six weeks later, obediently take it back to the shop and pay however many thousand bucks to have it brought it into compliance with whatever the whimsical tyrant's emissions regime requires this month.
Let's turn to an item from The Philadelphia Inquirer. A young American with a white-bread name ("Nick George") and a clean-cut mien returns from Jordan to resume his studies at Pomona College in California, and gets handcuffed and detained for five hours by U.S. Immigration and Philly police. Why? Well, he had Arabic-language flash cards in his pocket. Also, upon his return to the United States, his hair was shorter than on his Pennsylvania driver's license. "That is an indication sometimes," explained Lt. Louis Liberati, "that somebody may have gone through a radicalization." Really? As Nick George's boomer mom remarked, once upon a time long hair was a sign of radicalization. But now it's just a sign that you're an all-American spaced out doofus who'll grow up to congratulate himself for driving an Audi TDI.
At any rate, the coiffure set off a Code Red alert, and Nick George found himself being asked: "How do you feel about 9/11?"
According to the Inquirer's Daniel Rubin, "He said he hemmed and hawed a bit. 'It's a complicated question,' he told me by phone." However, young Nick ended up telling his captors, "It was bad. I am against it."
My, that's big of you.
Take it as read that the bozos at the airport called this one wrong. The problem is not that Nick George, his radical haircut notwithstanding, is a jihadist eager to self-detonate on a transatlantic flight. The problem is that he is an entirely typical American college student – one for whom 9/11 is "a complicated question." After all, to those reared in an educational system where the late Howard Zinn's "People's History of the United States" (now back in the bestseller lists) is conventional wisdom, such a view is entirely unexceptional. It's hardly Nick's fault that the banal groupthink of every American campus gets you pulled over for secondary screening when you're returning from Amman.
America can survive a few psychotic Islamic terrorists flying planes into skyscrapers. Whether it can survive millions of its own citizens mired in the same insipid conformo-radicalism as Nick George is another matter.
If you think "conformo-radicalism" is a contradiction in terms, well, such is the way of the world. It was reported last week that as many as a dozen men have been killed in disputes arising from karaoke performances of Frank Sinatra's "My Way." Surely, bellowing out "I did it my way" to Frank's backing track in a karaoke bar is the very definition of not doing it your way, but it's marginally less pathetic than the song's emergence in post-Christian Britain as a favorite funeral anthem: For what is a man? What has he got? If not himself, then he has not? Nothing sums up your iconoclastic individualism than someone else's signature song, right?
That's Nick George: "9/11? I do it my way." That's the metrosexual ninny in the Audi ad: "Thinking the way everyone else thinks has never felt so cool." The good news is, as in "Invasion of the Body Snatchers," there are still a few holdouts. The Washington Post ran a remarkable headline this week: "Europe Could Use Its Own Tea Party." Underneath David Ignatius went through the obligatory metropolitan condescension toward America's swampdwelling knuckledraggers before acknowledging that the Continent's problem was that there was no similar populist movement demanding fiscal sanity from the governing class.
He's right. I've been saying for months that the difference between America and Europe is that, when the global economy nosedived, everywhere from Iceland to Bulgaria mobs took to the streets and besieged Parliament, demanding to know why government didn't do more for them. This is the only country in the developed world where a mass movement took to the streets to say we can do just fine if you control-freak statists would just stay the hell out of our lives, and our pockets. You can shove your non-stimulating stimulus, your jobless jobs bill, and your multitrillion-dollar porkathons. This isn't karaoke. These guys are singing "I'll do it my way" for real.
But it's awfully late in the day. The end is near, we face the final curtain, and it's an open question whether the spirit of the tea parties can triumph over the soporific, sophomoric, self-flattering conformism of that Audi ad: Groupthink compliance has never felt so right!
©MARK STEYN
http://www.ocregister.com/opinion/way-234018-nick-audi.html
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I love the part about Clint Eastwood roaring through in the Gran Torino. Somebody needs to make an alternate commercial on the web and include that. :laugh:
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That is an exceptional piece of journalism. I don't circulate articles often, but this one I will.