“Look at the Cadillac in my driveway!” the advertisement, which debuted during the Olympics, suggests. “It proves I don’t know how to take vacations! In fact, I’m hostile to vacations. Heck, you think the astronauts who went to the moon, or….Les Paul or… Muhammad Ali ever took a vacation?”
As a consolation prize for this God-forsaken, restless existence, the hero in the advertisement gets himself a Cadillac. And not just any Cadillac — it’s a Cadillac ELR, a new electric car that costs about $75,000. I suppose there’s got to be a way to justify spending $75,000 on a car in the name of the environment, and this is it.
If the Olympics have you thinking about life in other countries, and perhaps even considering folks over there might have something to teach us about how to live over here, well, Cadillac is about to set you straight with this ad, which has run four times so far, according to ispot.tv
“Other countries, they work, they stroll home, they stop by the cafe,” the actor, Neil McDonough, says. Sounds nice, doesn’t it? “They take August. Off.” He then to scoff at such relaxation, and invoke the accomplishments of the Wright Brothers and Bill Gates.
“Why aren’t we like that? Because we’re crazy driven hard working believers, that’s why.”
As I’ve begun to chronicle on the Restless section of my site, America’s horrible relationship with the concept of Rest is leaving the people of this fine land physically, emotionally, and in some ways, morally bankrupt. In fact, some people are dying from working too hard. TV ads that glorify the culture of Restlessness don’t help.
European nations can’t even join the E.U. without promising workers a month of vacation time. (And yes, in quite a practical and efficient way, entire sectors take much of August off together. Surprisingly, the world continues to spin.) In the U.S., we are the only First World nation without mandatory vacation policies; a shocking number of people don’t even take the vacation they are given.
But for those rich folks who hate their lives so much they don’t dare stop and think about it for a moment, whose only relationship with their children is a high-five while they do schoolwork, there is a reward: A Cadillac in the driveway.
“As for all the stuff? That’s the upside of only taking two weeks off in August,” the actor says as the commercial closes.
There is enough tongue in cheek that Cadillac could certainly say, “We’re just kidding” to anyone who dislikes the ad’s message. But it’s real enough that it gets the message across. Might as well buy that expensive piece of driveway jewelry if the only spare time you have is spent driving back and forth to work.
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