One of my favorite spots of the otherwise dismal Superbowl last evening was the Audi "Green Police" ad. I loved it because I immediately thought it was a parody, a satire, of the nonsensical environmental craze gripping so much of the Western Hemisphere today. Likewise, many of my social media companions enjoyed it for the same reason.
And then my friend Dale from Wisconsin pointed out to me that this ad wasn't a clever mini-movie poking fun at the wackdoodles from the far Left, but a window in the soul of Audi's own corporate do-gooders.
I was, I admit, skeptical. The ad was too accurate a reflection of my own contempt for the "green police" to be anything other than satire.
And then I read this post from Michelle Malkin:
About that “Green Police” Super Bowl ad
By Michelle Malkin • February 8, 2010 01:00 PM
Some of you think Audi’s “Green Police” ad that ran during the Super Bowl last night was brilliant satire. Others were creeped out. Count me in the creeped-out camp.
Now, here is the context you need to judge which side Audi is on — from the company’s “Audi Green Police” website:
Who are the Green Police?
"As part of the lead up to their third consecutive Super Bowl ad, Audi has created a fictional Green Police unit that are caricatures of today’s “green movement”. The Green Police are a humorous group of individuals that have joined forces in an effort to collectively help guide consumers to make the right decision when it comes to the environment. They’re not here to judge, merely to guide these decisions.
Coincidentally, there are numerous real Green Police units globally that are furthering green practices and environmental issues. For example, Israel’s main arm of the Ministry of Environmental Protection in the area of enforcement and deterrence is called; you guess it, the Green Police. New York has officers within the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation that are fondly called the “Green Police”. The Green Police is also the popular name for Vietnam’s Environmental Police Department and the UK has a group who dresses in green as part of the Environment Agency’s squad to monitor excessive CO2 emissions.
Audi’s corporate greenies are aggressively peddling “sustainable development” programs through a multi-million-dollar non-profit foundation:
Audi AG has endowed the new Audi Environmental Foundation, an organization designed by the company to focus exclusively on environmentally minded pursuits for the common good, with a $5 million kitty.
Read the entire Malkin post for more details, and for the video of the spot itself. Likewise, read this take on the broader implications of the real-life "Green Police" from this reaction piece at HotAir.com:
The ad works for me far better as a warning of an overreaching government dictating choices — like incandescent lightbulbs, paper vs plastic in the grocery store, and choice of cars. Audi may convince some people to look into its clean-diesel offerings, but the ad itself is likely to elicit more concern over the direction of regulatory efforts, especially at the EPA, which declared carbon dioxide a dangerous pollutant last year and has started the effort to regulate manufacturing as a way to get around the legislative hurdles to cap-and-trade bills in Congress.
If the government really does intend on creating regulation over these kinds of choices, a “green police” will not be far behind, although not in the humorous style presented here. It will instead insert itself in home purchases, car choices, energy rationing, and in the use of private property. Government will pick the winners and losers rather than a free people making their own choices, and they will use the power of government to ensure that those winners prevail for the purposes of a governing elite.
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