I’m willing to concede that my loud delight with Dylan’s ad campaign for Cadillac might be considered a little unseemly; it is, after all, just a commercial. Clearly, what I am rather meanly taking pleasure in is the burning ire it is causing to the doctrinaire, leftist, global-warming-believing, fashionably anti-capitalist wing of Dylan’s alleged fan base. It is difficult to imagine anything that could outrage these types more than Dylan’s appearing in a commercial for the gargantuan gas-guzzling Cadillac Escalade. I think maybe the only worse thing could be Bob doing an ad campaign for Blackwater, Inc. (I can see it now: “This old world is full of trouble, and that’s why, when I’m traveling, I like to be protected by the very best.” All this with Masters of War playing in the background.).

It’s even all a little ironic for me personally. Not only do I never anticipate owning a Cadillac Escalade — I don’t even own a car. I walk or take public transporation everywhere. Occasionally I rent an economy car for a road trip. Were I to see a need to buy a car, I certainly wouldn’t be drawn to the behemothic Escalade. I would get a practical car, something that does closer to 40 mpg than 14. The one car I’ve owned was a Dodge Aries, a boring four-cylinder compact deal (although it was the wagon version). When I pass by a Cadillac Escalade parked on the street here in New York, I can’t help shaking my head at its absurd size. Who would need something like that, I wonder to myself. It’s hard enough to find a parking space in this town.

However, the difference is that I don’t progress from thinking that I would never want to own that vehicle to thinking that therefore no one else ought to have it either. If that’s what some people want to spend their money on, so be it. Jobs are thereby being provided to the people who manufacture it, and in this way the world goes round. Of-course, it helps a lot that I’m not a believer in man-made global-warming either. (On that note: Northern Georgia and other areas are currently experiencing dreadful drought conditions, in part because expected rainfall generated by hurricane activity has been almost totally absent for the past two years. I’m sure everyone remembers the spectacular hurricane forecast of 2006, which ended up being a deafeningly quiet season instead. “Never fear,” said the forecasters, “we know what we got wrong there, and we’re not going to get that wrong this year.” This year, 2007, another very active hurricane season was predicted, with the U.S. in the crosshairs. How has that prediction panned out? Yet, while smart people who devote themselves to a topic as relatively narrow as forecasting hurricanes for the coming season continue to show the capacity to get it so dramatically wrong, we’re supposed to believe that Al Gore knows what the freaking temperature is going to be twenty years, fifty years, and a hundred years from now. Garbage.)

So, while it lasts, I just can’t resist taking pleasure from this moment, and yes, the misery it is causing some others (misery, mind you, which is really self-inflicted). I’m drawing down on my forgiveness account, and hoping there’s some left when I go a knockin’ on heaven’s door.

Just a couple of notes from other sinners:

From Dana:

These ads are a hoot. While driving down a rather barren road (could it be Texas?) he passes what appears to be an oil holding tank in a field, a gas tanker semi truck, and a train pulling two tankers. I am sure Bob is more than well aware of the beating SUV owners have taken in recent years for being resource depleting, carbon emissions creating capitalist pigs. These images are no accident. I would love to have been privy to the exchange of ideas that went into their creation. Go Bob and Cadillac!

BabyBlue:

The Commercial is hysterical! I mean – did you see how he passes an oil tanker on the open highway! HAH HAH HAH!!! The satire – he hasn’t changed!!

Just sticks it the The Establishment, doesn’t he. I wrote at BabyBlue, “another sacred cow bites the dust.”

By the way, did you see the yellow ribbon tied around the pole?

Sue said:

Just saw your post on this and surprise, surprise there’s the expected claim of “sell out”.
I think those of us who “know” Bob better would only feel he had sold out if he was advertising a Prius.

Gosh, what a thought!

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To recap, here are YouTube links to the thirty-second ad, the sixty-second ad, and the two minute extravaganza.

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