Jewish World Review June 12, 2002 / 2 Tamuz, 5762
Ian Shoales
Very similar to a rock
http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com |
Bill Ford took back the chairmanship of Ford Motor Company from Jacques Nasser
last year, and since then he's been running a series of commercials on
television starring himself as a kind of homespun, down home, homey guy, kind of
like the late Dave Thomas, I guess, only he makes motor vehicles instead of fast
food.
The trouble with the spots, for me personally, is that chairmen of Fortune 500
Companies, no matter how hard I squint, just don't strike me as the kind of guy
who'd move in next door. And even if he did move in next door, he strikes me as
a little-- well, how do I put this? Dull.
All he talks about is Fords, for one thing. That's understandable, I suppose.
He is trying to move those suckers out of the factory and into our garages,
after all. And he's got home movies of his Ford ancestors camping out with
Presidents and Thomas Edison and he talks about how he fell in love with Ford
the Mustang after watching BULLITT, and if he could only have ONE CAR, it would
be a Ford Mustang, and how he likes the outdoors so much, he won't even stay in
a hotel unless he can open a window.
So all that is well and good, he's a Ford who likes Fords (what a shock!), and
an outdoorsman who likes room service. But how is this wealth of
autobiographical detail supposed to get me on the showroom floor?
I'm not going to be camping out with Presidents, I won't be chasing assassins
through the hills of San Francisco any time soon, and I don't stay in hotels as
a rule. If it's not a seedy motel with a broken vibra-bed and a bad oil
painting of Greek ruins, I say the hell with it. The windows COULD open if they
weren't rusted shut, but it's not something I worry about. Not so long as the
leaky air conditioner is blasting cold air.
What kind of hotel does Bill Ford stay in any way? How do you FIND a hotel with
windows that open? I thought they were all climate-controlled. But even if he
does have access to hotels with screened-in porches in the penthouse, and a
place for him to pitch his pup tent, and set up his projector and show home
movies for the hotel staff of his great-grandfather catching walleye with
Nikolai Tesla and the Kaiser-- well, again, how does that make me want to buy a
car?
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JWR contributor Ian Shoales is the author of, among others, Not Wet Yet: An Anthology of Commentary. Comment by clicking here.
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© 2001, Ian Shoales
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