VIDEO: God Created Transit

In response to the “farmer” Super Bowl Ad that conflates salt-of-the-earth people and car ownership, Next City’s Diana Lind created a video, in which God created transit.

I can’t deny that the “God Made a Farmer” Super Bowl ad for Dodge RAM trucks was beautiful. The imagery was Americana at its finest. Paul Harvey’s voice, which animated the pictures, in and of itself stunned me. Like other ads that have come out of the Chrysler car company, it put a lump in my throat.

And yet the ad, like the one about soldiers for Jeep, conflated the merits of people with those of cars. Which seems a bit sad for 2013, when in the past six months climate change has reared its ugly head and begged us to change our consumption economy for something a bit more sustainable. And the nostalgic imagery — as if we only believe in farmers and soldiers to represent the best of humanity, and as if buying a car is a noble act — started to offend me.

So I thought I’d try making my own video in response. Keep in mind it’s my first foray into creating a video and I didn’t have much time to do this (between my own job and my own transit riding). But I hope it strikes a chord for anyone else who felt that transit and the people who ride it got short shrift from the Super Bowl ads.

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Diana Lind is the former executive director and editor in chief of Next City.

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