Thank you, Chrysler
January 1, 2007
adrien rain burke
Lots of New Years' Days, I DON'T get up early enough to join my neighbor for pastry and coffee and a couple of hours oohing over the flowery confections of the Rose Parade as they glide down Colorado. But, I have always liked the parade, and if my Jan 1 morn is hangover-free I indulge. Today I indulged. I don't actually have a tv that functions as such; my television is strictly dvd- and video-dedicated. No antenna, for one thing, and no cable. I've got enough bills and little patience for the boob tube's idea of news - even entertainment. As a matter of fact, I find television ugly, crass, and demeaning to the human spirit. Since I left it in such a huff, and since I watch it so rarely, I don't expect much of it, really. I truly thought television could sink no lower. . . . . until today.
Having arrived at my elderly neighbor's house a little late, I stayed after the end of the live broadcast to watch the advertisement-rich recap of the first few floats.
And saw the Chrysler ad, which ends with the not overly attractive driver's wife of many years being replaced with a young hottie, in response to which he fervently whispers, "thank you Chrysler." Even my neighbor, who expresses mainly puzzlement for the cause of feminism, gasped aloud.
So thank you, Chrysler, for putting me, and the rest of women over 40 so humiliatingly in our place - because knowing that place is the key to renewing a maligned and neglected struggle. Thank you, Chrysler, for every woman that you woke up today, by so thoroughly discounting her humanity. It is good to remember that one really is in a fight. It is good to remember that experience and intelligence - while extolled in men - are no substitute for bouncing bimboism in the fair sex. Isn't that the transparent truth behind those Fundamentalist LDS cults? After all, doesn't every man fantasize about replacing his closest friend (perhaps too intimate a friend to hold him in great awe) with a worshipful daughter figure?
After all, some people now dote on electronic 'pets.' They don't seem to know the difference between a mechanical reproduction of a dog or cat, and a live being - an alien creature with it's own mind, and its own problems, in warm fur. What is next, I wonder? The desire to replace one's own children, perhaps, with a really great car? Would the contemporary counterpart of the tragic King Midas now softly whisper, "Thank you, Chrysler?"
I had been too complacent. After all, aren't TWO feminine names for the first woman in the White House - Condoleezza and Hilary - under official consideration - and by leaders of the two state-approved political parties to boot? (I had begun to wonder whether I COULD vote for a woman president - since it appears that the choices I am to be given are distasteful beyond description.) At every hand toothy female landsharks occupy posts once reserved for men, and with quite as much ruthlessness. I tried to tell myself that this first wave of 'equals' was merely tainted by having had to 'make it in a man's world.' And that may still have some truth to it, but your ad, Chrysler, has taught me that the problem is much deeper than that.
And thank you, Chrysler, for giving me this message on the first day of a New Year. I needed that, I really did. Because this is the day I sketch out a kind of To Do List for the year ahead. That list is now one item longer: "Fight Chrysler."
Thank you, Chrysler, for reminding me that feminism is still urgently needed. And thank you, too, Chrysler, for reminding me that Capitalism has no conscience and no shame. Many corporations slyly feign a warm fuzzy prelude to the fleecing they intend for us - but not YOU, Chrysler. You get right to it: man* is a beastly, unsentimental assemblage of greed, heartless lust, and cynicism - without a blink - without even a wink, you cater to the basest beast in him, and maybe you can sell him another overpriced, smelly device for destroying the planet.
* Requisite disclaimer to men - No offense whatever is intended by the use of the male noun here. By 'man' of course, I mean the generic, collective noun - as in 'mankind' - or so I've been told.
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