What a country

If you've watched any playoff baseball, or apparently any other major sporting event recently, you've probably been bombarded by the new Chevy ad campaign featuring a crappy song by John Mellencamp called "This Is Our Country," which, logically, is being used to sell trucks.

Sports columnists (OK, Bill Simmons) have been griping about this for a while, mostly because they can't seem to avoid getting the jingle stuck in their heads after hearing it ad nauseam. And now it's getting the attention at the Old Gray Lady, where they're grappling with the symbolism of the iconic scenes of civil rights heroes and disasters being used to hawk a new pickup.

Unfortunately, the so-called "media experts" seem equally clueless as the sportswriting types when it comes to the most boggling aspect of the ad. Namely, the part where a short scene from Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech practically dissolves into images of American troops in Vietnam.

Uh, hello?! Can somebody please pick up on the fact that this is a ridiculous juxtaposition, blending one of the most prominent and vocal critics of the Vietnam War with images that seem to glorify it? It could've been worse. They could've dissolved from the image of Rosa Parks to a picture of a Klansman burning a cross or a black church. Maybe then someone else might have picked up on a glaring incongruity. But, hey, all's fair in commercial capitalism, right?