I had intended to upload a video compilation of the best commercials from Super Bowl LI but, unfortunately, nobody wants to watch a video 0:00 in length. If you happened to miss the big game, you missed the Atlanta Falcons blowing a 25-point lead. But, on the bright side, if you missed the game, you also missed out on a bunch of preachy, social justice-driven commercials that provided as much entertainment as a corporate boardroom meeting. It was like being subjected to employer-mandated sensitivity training, but without the paid time off work.
And who do we have to thank for the killing of the time-honored great American pastime of enjoying funny Super Bowl commercials? Liberal America, of course.
Audi's self-congratulatory ad
First, there was the Audi commercial, sternly reminding men that it's no longer 1847 and women are allowed to wear pants and vote. "What do I tell my daughter?" asks the narrator against a backdrop of dramatic music apparently ripped from a Sundance festival foreign film. "Do I tell her that her grandpa is worth more than her grandma? That her dad is worth more than her mom?" On and on it went, until Audi displays text proclaiming that the company supports equal pay for females. As if Chevy and Chrysler are paying their female employees in plastic poker chips.
Good for you, Audi, way to pat yourselves on the back.
#WeAccept credit card payment only
Coca-Cola and Airbnb also got in on the morality lecture act, with ads that touched on immigration and diversity. Coca-Cola ran with last year's corporate exploitation of the multi-culturalism fad, while the Airbnb ad featured text that read: “We believe no matter who you are, where you’re from, who you love, or who you worship, we all belong.
The world is more beautiful the more you accept," and a mysterious hashtag at the end, #WeAccept, which was obviously a marketing gimmick to get viewers to try to figure out which company actually wasted millions of dollars on such a trite, maudlin, preachy snoozer of a Super Bowl Ad. Only if you followed the Twitter trail could you tell that it was Airbnb's fault.
And, of course, there was the Budweiser ad that seemed to make a political statement arguing for the allowing of refugees into the county. The takeaway from this commercial was that if Donald Trump had been president during the 19th century, we wouldn't have cheap, lousy beer like Budweiser to drink. The ad failed to point out, however, that Adolphus Busch didn't hail from a country that had a terrorism problem.
When people watch Super Bowl commercials, they want slapstick humor and lowbrow comedy -- not a lecture on morality. So thank you, liberal America, for destroying the one part of the Super Bowl that many of us find mildly entertaining -- or, at least, used to.
