Michael Hiltzik: That Dodge trucks Super Bowl ad shows it's time to loosen the King family's grip on MLK's legacy
Amid the commercial miasma swirling around Sunday's Super Bowl telecast, one advertisement actually stood out as something of a cultural and social event. It was an ad for Dodge Ram trucks, featuring the uplifting words of none other than Martin Luther King Jr.
The ad provoked immediate comment on social media - none of it, as far as we can tell, positive. It was seen as a landmark in crassness. That was true not least because in the speech excerpted for the ad, a 1968 sermon entitled "The Drum Major Instinct," King spends some considerable time excoriating the advertiser-driven quest for material acquisitions, including cars.
"We are so often taken by advertisers," he declared. "They have a way of saying things to you that kind of gets you into buying.... You've seen people riding around in Cadillacs and Chryslers who don't earn enough to have a good T-Model Ford." Those words weren't in the script for the Ram truck company (which is owned by, yes, Fiat Chrysler). The ad just stuck to King's exhortation to become
