This, my friends, is the BEST:
Tiger's Bedtime Story Accenture Ad
I frankly needed a smile before my bitch-rant. This is my favorite commercial right now. When it comes on, I stop whatever it is I'm doing and watch...and by now I've seen it probably 4 dozen times. Still watching it. Why?
First, to see Tiger's sheer joy on his face at the end of it, when he says "He kicked his butt." To me, the daughter of a drama instructor and director, Tiger communicates perfectly...let me emphasize...PERFECTLY to all children what's so good about competing to win. He makes the prize of winning, or atleast a job well done, a tangible thing. Preparing to win. Following through. And Winning. Hell, he communicates it to all adults, too. He raises the fable of the Tortoise and the Hare to new heights as an allegory for success. For the first time in my 53 years, I saw the tortoise as a Player: a buff athlete determined to exploit his strength in order to win. Before, I just thought of him as an symbol of Good against Evil.
I raised a daughter through 9 years of softball and 4 years of dance team, and I've never seen a more effective persuasion. Nobody ever read that bedtime story to me that way. And I suspect I am not alone by a large margin.
The commercial is clear, concise, not an ounce of fat on it. Endearing scenario, excellent script, and may I say that even though Tiger's diction could use some training, he has a raw photogenic and communicative talent. The camera loves him. And that killer smile that he seems to guard protectively, not letting it out just for any old reason. Good strategy, for it makes that smile a precious thing.
I would love to know the ages of the team that conceived this ad. I suspect strongly that they are young, probably in their late twenties, early thirties, but no older. Everything about the ad is the new version of the traditional. GenX ad creatives would have ridiculed the traditional and that would have been the message and said, meh, buy us anyway. At least we can laugh at ourselves.
But not this. This takes the tradition and puts a new, more useable spin on it. It respects the old while changing it to new. This is Millenial / Gen Y creative stuff. I can just feel it. And since Tiger, at 29, is of that generation, it might even be coming from his own vision. I would not be surprised.
I'm a sucker for commercials. I bend over backwards to give them a fair shot, yet few of them ever really pass my muster. This one trampled all over me and leaves me screaming, Do It Again! Here's the direct link to it on Best Ads TV.
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Now to the Bad. What is it about the Obama Administration that leaves one feeling as if on a roller coaster ride conducted by a drunk driver and it never stops?
It definitely causes me to pick my battles, lest I spend 24 hours a day taking issue.
Today Attorney General Eric Holder announced that the 9/11 terror suspects (I'm not even gonna use their names because I'll screw them up) will not be tried by a military court, but in a criminal New York City court.
On the face of that news, you may be like, so what? Okay. And if you are a Leftie who has been in perpetual salivation mode for --- what? --- 3-4 years to see Dubya, Cheney and Rove hung from the highest trees because of Gitmo and waterboarding, then today was the Friday the 13th from Heaven. (Or, Allah smiled on you, take your pick.)
But if it's stuff like this about Obama that makes your blood boil, then you are livid at this news. Here, the Left is thinking, okay, there is zero chance these suspects will not be comvicted, so let's get a 2fer out of it. Obama is down in the polls, and what does he and his do when that happens? Why, they throw their Leftie base a bone! And this bone is called the Use the 9/11 Victims and Their Families to Punish Bush. Win-win in their eyes, and no downside.
However, the Right is worried. If they are actually worried about Bush/Cheney?Rove being punished and proven wrong, then I have absolutely no sympathy with them. Personally, I think Bush skirted the rules right along the line enough to do what he thought was needed while everyone around him, including Democrats in Congress, sat by and watched. It was a technical win as dispicable as what Obama's people are doing now.
But punishing Bush for skirting the rules is not my dog in this fight. Stopping that kind of politcial behavior is my more worthy cause, no matter how tempting it is to turn the tables and do it better. To me, to do what Holder announced today is to spit in the face of the victims and their families, for it will surely bring needless sensationalism and a circus atmosphere to what should be swift, sure and approriate justice. Those brave souls, our fellow citizens, deserve no less from us, in their memories.
And given what happens a lot in our criminal courts today (and New York is not a conservative bastion), there is a real possiblity these jokers could go free or get off on a technicality, something that military courts don't do an awful lot of. And at the least, the trial could end up being completely focussed on Bush and torture instead of what it should be focussed on: the events on the morning of September 11, 2001.
So, to me, it's not worth the risk of those things happening. Once again, an ADULT would know this is not appropriate. Tempting, yes. Politically expedient, yes. Good governance? In a textbook, maybe. But not in real life. The official argument (which if you do like me and start my day with MSNLSD as Mark Levin calls them, so by noon you know the Democrat talking points by heart) is that New Yorkers should sit in judgment of those who wronged them, and the Supreme Court has ruled in a way that can be interpreted to support this.
But we were all wronged on that day. It's bigger than NYC. America was terrorized. New Yorkers breathed in the smoke and had their buildings toppled and their friends and loved ones killed, but we all felt the fear and uncertainty, for weeks. It has not been the first time I think the SCOTUS has missed the point. And I will never ever be able to accept, much less condone, the ruthless nature of Barrack Obama and his team. At some point, it has to be asked, do the ends justify the means? And I am not talking about waterboarding.
