Now anyone that knows me knows that I am a car freak. I love cars. I love trucks. I love to drive. However, this note will not be about my love for cars but rather the amount of disdain that I have for one of my favorite car companies and its main competitor. In the past few months, I've set one of my goals for next year as buying a Mercedes Benz CLS and eventually work my way up to a BMW 7-Series. BMW being one of my favorite car manufacturers on the planet greatly upset me when I was listening to the radio and a BMW commercial came on. The commercial consisted mainly of neo-soul music (once again anyone who knows me knows that I hate that distinction, there is nothing new about soul). This bothered not only because I'm not a really big "neo-soul" fan, but because this commercial was directed straight at black folk. Onto the next commercial. Once again, on the same station a commercial came on, but this time it was for the Mercedes Benz C230 (an entry-level Benz), this commercial consisted of an updated version of the Jeffersons' theme song, "Movin' on up." It was almost chiding come on little negro, "move on up" from your piece of crap Cutlass, Monte Carlo, or Regal (I'm from the New Orleans area, you may not understand) to the cheapest Benz you can buy.
It's almost as though complaints are issued to major companies about there not being any "color" in their ads and then they overdo it by adding nothing more than stereotypes, i.e., any Church's commercial with the hip-hop music in the backgroud. My father loves Church's but only listens to Blues and talk radio. Is this commercial directed at him?
Why is it that people are angered by a "lack of consideration", but not by misrepresentation? If you have 200 commercials showing a white man and family in a 750Li, there will be an uproar from the black community, but all BMW has to do is shoot one commercial showing a black man with a baseball cap on, a "7" with 22's, and tint and all is right with the world. That's that bullshit. Oh well, there's always Audi.
