Updated to correct geographic error
There’s a chapel in Kansas standing on the exact center of the lower 48.
This chapel isn’t really the geographic center of the continental US, despite getting that label in 1918. It’s the star of a Super Bowl commercial calling for red and blue America to get back to “the middle.”
Strike one: beginning a commercial that calls for political reconciliation by using a fabrication, no matter how minor, when today’s political divide has been nurtured by a pack of lies.
All are more than welcome to come meet here in the middle.
The ad opens with a glimpse of a weathered cowboy boot then lights on a nondescript chapel that seats eight. Its centerpiece: a cross superimposed on a map of the country decorated as a US flag.
All are welcome? Really?
The chapel may always be open. But anyone who says it is welcome to all is speaking from a place of privilege. America is not a Christian nation; we have no national religion. Would a Hindu feel comfortable here? A Jew? A Muslim? An atheist?
Almost one-third of Kansas residents (31%) consider themselves evangelical protestant. Nationally, it’s 25%. Kansas has fewer Catholics, Jews, Muslims, and unaffiliated than the nation as a whole.
Demographically, Kansas is also not representative of the country: 75.4% White (not Hispanic or Latino) compared to 60.1% for the country; 6.1% Black compared to 13.4% for the country; 3.2% Asian compared to 5.9% for the country; and 7.1% foreign born versus 13.5%.
Love this part of the Jeep #ReunitedStates Super Bowl commercial where they show this picture and say “We need the middle.” pic.twitter.com/eFkMK9K8ka
— kristibledsoe (@kristibledsoe1) February 8, 2021
Strike two: all are welcome? Really?
The Jeep ad is not just tone deaf, but it doesn't even reflect the image of America today in diversity, in inclusion, or even fundamentally.
– an old church
– a cowboy
– riding off into the sunset on a "jeep"Not it guys… definitely not it.
— The Commissioner ? (@ItsKennyatta) February 8, 2021
Kansas may be geographically “centered” but it sure as hell isn’t ideologically centrist.
In 2019, Kansas prisons banned 7,000 books and magazines, from self-help books to Margaret Attwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. Later they changed the policy, but they were still banning books such as 100 No-Equipment Workouts, John Grisham’s A Time to Kill, Neil Gaiman’s The DC Universe, and Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye.
Moreover, Bruce Springsteen and Jeep are calling for a ReUnited States of America using an incomplete map that wasn’t accurate even in 1918 when geographers picked a point a mile away from this site as the nation’s “center”, using a cardboard cutout of the country.
Strike three: in addition to ideological dissonance, the map ignores Alaska, Hawaii and the upper peninsula of Michigan as well as Guam, Puerto Rico, and the US Virgin Islands (all of whom are American citizens who have no voting rights).
#jeep made a “Reunited states of America” super bowl commercial………… They really told the UP to go fuck themselves
(For you non-Michiganders, the UP is not on the map) pic.twitter.com/mOUzT4MdVR
— Cayla McMullen (@CaylaMcmullen) February 8, 2021
I’m weary of rural America being singled out as the “real” America.
Just as I’m weary of news orgs sending reporters “to the middle” of the country for ‘anthropologic’ stories.
Bruce Springsteen wanted to be “authentic” so he and his 1980 Jeep CJ-5 went to Kansas to film this in January. News reports make it clear that although the idea may have originated with Jeep’s ad agency, Springsteen was intimately involved with its production. That’s his music in the background. I believe it’s also his “long walk home,” as described in the Catholic Herald.
This ad wasn’t seasoned with religion. Religion was the main course. It ran during a controversial sporting event in the middle of a global pandemic, calling for political reunification using the metaphor of a small country church in middle America.
It panders to a minority of White America and evokes a wistful past that is a Hollywood sleight of hand.
Ironically, the ad pleas for community-minded action today yet relies on the myth of the independent, I don’t need nobody, cowboy to make the pitch. Financed with corporate dollars designed to sell more Jeeps (or at least make viewers feel good about the brand).
It’s an unappetizing stew of capitalism, politics and religion.
When that 1980 Jeep CJ-5 was a youngster, Nancy Reagan made just say no the center of the White House campaign against drug abuse. And then the slogan entered pop culture.
You shoulda just said no to Jeep, Bruce.
Known for gnawing at complex questions like a terrier with a bone. Digital evangelist, writer, teacher. Transplanted Southerner; teach newbies to ride motorcycles. @kegill (Twitter and Mastodon.social); wiredpen.com