The advertising geniuses from Hummer have abandoned any pretense. They are openly appealing to people who want bigger penises.
Hummer has new TV commercials depicting situations where someone is made to feel like a wuss and then compensates for it by buying a Hummer.
One ad features a mother and her young son at the playground slide. A kid cuts in line in front of the little boy. The mother complains to the line-cutter's mom that her son was next. The other mother replies smugly, "Well, we're next now," leaving mother No. 1 stunned.
Cut to: the bullied mom signing the papers for a brand new Hummer. The slogan appears: "Get Your Girl On."
Another Hummer ad shows two men in the grocery store. One man watches as the cashier rings up his tofu, sprouts, juice and other health foods. He turns around and looks sheepishly at the guy behind him in line who is unloading a shopping cart full of big honkin' slabs of meat. They exchange an awkward smile. Tofu man's response, of course, is to run right out and put himself behind the wheel of a new Hummer. Initially, that ad ran with the slogan: "Restore Your Manhood." Then the company threw it in reverse and changed the line to: "Restore the Balance."
The funniest part of the ads, to me, comes at the very end when the camera pulls back to show a shot of the earth from space and the Hummer logo. What's that supposed to be? The global warming cam?
So Hummer wants to help us "restore the balance" in a culture gone soft.
Sure, the ads are funny in a jaw-dropping, eye-blinking, politically incorrect way. By being so over the top, Hummer execs wink at the audience that they are in on the joke.
But these absurd messages tell us we will feel stronger driving a gas-guzzling monstrosity even if it worsens an environmental catastrophe and increases a dangerous dependency on foreign oil that keeps our soldiers in faraway wars.
There, Hummer, is that the outraged liberal blogger reaction you were banking on?
Hummer is a slick company and knows how people like me will react. There are tons of us out there who, by expressing disgust over these ads, will be cast unwittingly in the role of oppressive elitist do-gooders. The buzz they wanted is already there in the form of angry posts all over the web. This neat trick, a sort of rhetorical judo move, transforms people with a social conscience into ...hmmm... bullies.
The genius of this propaganda is that our loud disapproval swiftly turns rich, insecure Hummer fans into an oppressed minority. Of course, what would appeal to this group more than raising a big vehicular middle finger to everyone who thinks it's wrong?
So, Hummer, while you're urging people to "Restore the Balance" and "Get Your Girl On," this girl is on to you.