Have you seen the Super Bowl ad deemed TOO HOT FOR TV? No, it didn’t involve a nip-slip of any kind, it didn’t involve sexy football cheerleaders being too sexy, or anything like that. It featured, rather, the immigration journey of a Mexican woman and her young daughter to the United States.
The ad was for 84 Lumber, and although it did air during the Super Bowl, it did not air in its entirety! Because FOX decided that the end part, where the mother and daughter come to a wall, was just too critical of Donald Trump’s stupid border wall. It was too controversial! It might upset some people! People who don’t like immigrants and love the border wall, and don’t want to be forced to empathize with “those people” by some dumb ol’ commercial!
The commercial, titled “The Journey Begins,” ends with the statement “The will to succeed is always welcome here,” and according to Rob Shapiro — chief client officer at Brunner, the agency that created the ad, its message was that “America is the land of opportunity and 84 Lumber is the company of opportunity.” Which is nice! Remember when that was a thing we all used to be proud of? Haha, those days are gone.
Interestingly enough, the other most controversial ad was for Budweiser, of all things! The ad features the immigrant journey of Anheuser-Busch co-founder Adolphus Busch, in which he faces discrimination by people on the streets yelling “You’re not wanted here!”
The ad so deeply offended many Trump supporters that they are now threatening a Bud boycott!
You see! The rule in America is that in exchange for being allowed to assimilate, in exchange for your Real American card, you agree to have a short memory. The rule is that once your people are officially assimilated, you have to then pretend that they never actually went through any hardship when they first came here, so that you can then go and act just like the people who were shitty to your relatives when they first came! Because your relatives were the right kind of immigrants, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise!
Because otherwise — oh man, you might actually have sympathy for the immigrants of today, and that would just be wrong! And hey — even if you admit that people were maybe not so nice to your relatives when they came over here, those people were wrong. You are not wrong this time, because this is a totally different thing. Somehow! Even though they are literally using the exact same stereotypes (lazy, criminal, terrorist) and the exact same slogans (America First!) as they used back then. The difference is, of course, that this time you are right.
Of course, the ad itself is entirely a fabrication. Adolphus Busch was not poor and struggling, he was actually from a rather well-off family back in Germany and likely didn’t experience the same kind of troubles faced by immigrants who were actually very poor. It’s a true story in the sense that this is what happened to other people — it’s not a true story in that this is what happened to Adolphus Busch.
[Rolling Stone / Slate / Esquire]
