Freedom

Today, Wednesday I awoke to a State where one of my rights which had been taken away by a popular vote was reinstated. It's not a right that I was in any danger of exercising. It was not my right to vote, my rights concerning age discrimination or my rights concerning the fact that I cannot be fired in California simply for being gay although in 29 other states I can be. I was my right to marry the person I might love.

I know that there are people who honestly feel that the sanctity of marriage is compromised by this ruling, but it's not the job of the state to sanctify anything- that's what a church is for. I neither wish to nor expect to walk down the aisle at Good Shepherd until the church decides to allow it, if they ever do. If I meet someone and wish to, I'll do it at city hall. The idea that I actually might have the option to marry says absolutely nothing about anything but my civil rights. Why are stable, long-term same=sex couples denied the right to marry when Kardashians and Britneys can do so on a whim and back out in a few days?

The day Obama was elected was a happy one for this Democrat. However it was tempered by the headlines that Prop 8 was (barely) passed. My straight friends and colleagues (the democrats anyway) were so happy. I was too, but there was that nagging "get to the back of the bus" thing that took some of the sweetness out of the day. Today's ruling was sweet indeed.

How To Do It, and How Not To Do It.

Back in the day when GM was struggling, one of the true believers cut some footage into a short film that I believe was shown at a in-house gathering. It was so good it made it to the internets and I believe to broadcast. It was perfect- it showed in a brief, snappy way what the company had achieved and where they were going:

Then the marketers decided that a sequel was necessary. I hope the original people didn't have anything to do with it. I'd like to think that some department above them thought they could do better, because the second one was everything the first wasn't: bloated. self-referring, celebrity-driven, obvious in it's use of stock footage and worst of all, more about self-congratulating crap than about the promise of the product coming up. See below:

But I have to write that the best commercial for a automaker in the past 20 years was in my opinion the Cadillac commercial "Moments". See below:

Those Saarinen staircases of the design center and the jewel-faceted cars. Cole Porter and rappers. Movie premiers and a kid clutching a model '59. Brilliant. I think it should be up there with the Apple "1984" ad in that it's telling people this is the new Cadillac. A company that knows where they've been and know where they're going.

As an ad for a brand it should be studied in marketing classes.