Bruce Springsteen did his first commercial, ever, on Super Bowl Sunday.
Jeep bought a 2-minute spot in the fourth quarter of Sunday’s game that featured Springsteen, who had never before lent his name or music for a commercial product. In the commercial, The Boss intoned a message of unity, as he turned Jeep’s pitch into the short film, and used the middle of the country—the literal center: a tiny chapel in Lebanon, Kansas—as the metaphorical reconciliation spot for our divided nation.
Um, Bruce, do we really have to wear Cowboy hats, and go to places with far, far more horses than, you know, human beings?
Do we have to go to church?
I have no problems with entering a house of prayer that is not my own; and if you say I’d be welcome there, I suppose I’ll believe you. But your spot really isn’t the middle, is it? Where you see open spaces, I see closed doors.
You say, “We need the middle.” You say, “We need to remember the very soil we stand on is common ground.” But that also means we can find the middle in a Harlem coffee shop; or a San Francisco school board meeting; or an Atlanta gymnasium.
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