So apparently the “green” bandwagon has Bridgestone tires on it, or at least Bridgestone would like for us to believe it does. The idea of a tire company feeling like it needs to act all environmentally hippified is fairly amusing, but it’s also kinda pathetic that the whole liberal guilt-by-association thing and its resultant market pressure is being felt throughout the entire automotive industry from the evil oil companies straight through the whole car, all the way down to the tires. Yes, now even tire manufacturers are being considered evil due to the fact that they’re producing a product that’s a part of a car, and cars run on gas, and gas comes from oil, and all oil is evil, etc., etc.; you get the picture. But why they’d want to rub in the connection and basically acquiesce to admitting complicity and culpability in the destruction of the Earth through pollution and global warming for making tires is beyond me.
I guess we all know in the back of our minds that tires are every bit as guilty as oil companies for all the evils of petroleum production, consumption, and oil spills and their resulting environmental disasters, etc., right? I mean, if it weren’t for tires, cars would have nothing to ride on, and they’d be useless; then nobody would want, need or be able to use oil or gasoline, and the Earth would be a happy, clean utopia without strife, danger, hatred or malice. So when you really think about it, tires are more to blame for the problems of the world than any other product ever created! And I never would have thought to blame tires for everything had I not seen this commercial. Well, at least Bridgestone is willing to be honest enough to admit their horrible guilt for all the world’s ills, even if all the other tire companies are still in denial and furiously endeavoring to trick us into blaming others for all the evil they do. And for that reason, I think we should all buy our tires exclusively from Bridgestone. (Well, until the other tire companies start to run ads that finally admit their products are horrible, evil, Earth-murdering rubber donuts from hell, and grovel at our feet with tree-hugging propaganda.)
So to the commercial: This ad shows a little girl flipping through some big fake pop-up book full of artificial environmentalist propaganda that tricks her into thinking Bridgestone cares about the Earth and stuff, when we all know their product is the whole reason we burn oil and cause global warming and pollution in the first place. But since this little girl is a young, trusting, impressionable, gullible, naïve child, she can’t see through this blatant ruse, and she is clearly fooled into thinking a tire company is trying to help, rather than destroy the planet. So they have created another “useful idiot” to fight for the cause of “big tire”! We’re all doomed, since the next generation who will control the world someday soon is being manipulated by children’s books into protecting the big, evil corporations who want to kill Mother Earth! Oh, sorry, I was distracted again by my disgust at this insidious attempt by an immoral and malevolent corporate greed-machine and Earth-murderer to use innocent children as a propaganda weapon against the green warriors amongst us, knowing that their only weakness is the meltability of their hearts in the face of cuteness. Well, that and pot. And their rabid, unbalanced intolerance of meat and fur and Sarah Palin and McDonald’s and Republicans and stuff. (Actually, it occurs to me that if Bridgestone wanted to distract environmentalists from remembering that their tires are destroying the planet, what they ought to do is secretly start up a hamburger restaurant chain where they serve huge burgers made from the meat of cute, furry animals, and served to people by waitresses dressed up as Sarah Palin in a mink coat, or by waiters dressed up as clowns who gives kids free toys covered with lead paint. Then all the hippies would be busy protesting and attacking the restaurant, and Bridgestone could just keep on making their evil tires in peace. They’d just have to keep it a secret that they owned the restaurant!)
Okay, so to the commercial: There’s a little girl looking at a pop-up book that shows stuff like people (allegedly) planting trees (actually, they’re just lifting the same shovelfuls of dirt up and down, but whatever), cleaning up tar balls from beaches after an oil spill, using solar panels to light up a little-teensy light bulb, throwing red paint on rich women’s mink coats (okay, I made that last part up), etc. Then there’s a green car driving past a bunch of gray cars in a traffic jam (since we all know that renewable energy will eliminate gridlock), and there’s some huge rainbow overhead, but it’s not a very pretty rainbow since it’s just black and says “Bridgestone” on it. Oh, and they also show how if you pull a little lever, a bald tire will have new tread on it or something. So the girl looks totally super-fascinated by all of this, as she’s smiling and making “amazed”-looking expressions and stuff while perusing this tome; and we know she’s not acting, because little girls are always really interested in everything to do with cars, especially tires and emissions and stuff like that. But I guess a little girl is heart-meltier than a little boy, so there you are. (Oh, sorry, was that sexist?)
So, like I said, I suppose it’s smart of them to try to trick children into thinking climate change isn’t their fault, and that renewable energy is all their idea, and that they clean up all the oil spills and stuff, because kids aren’t old enough to realize that they’re lying. So then the kids will grow up to conquer the environmentalists, leaving Bridgestone free to destroy the Earth with pollution and global warming unfettered by meddling hippies. And while it might be nice to be rid of the hippies, I still kind of think they shouldn’t be allowed to make those horrible, malicious tires that are ruining the planet! It’s a good thing they didn’t show any tire fires in that pop-up book! But maybe now that they’ve given them the idea, environmentalists could make their own pop-up book to smear Bridgestone for their complicity in destroying Mother Earth! (But since I thought of it first, they should have to pay me royalties so I can go out and eat steak dinners for the rest of my life at expensive restaurants!)
(This ad is not on the internet that I could find, I guess because they didn’t want me to be able to make fun of it. But I saw it on TV anyway, so there!)
