A couple of years ago I answered my phone. A chipper voice came on and said "Hi! I'm Rachel from Cardholder Services". By the time she got this far I had decided two things. First, this was a robocall. Second, this was a scam. I was right in both instances. Rachel went on to assure me that there was nothing wrong with my account but if I pressed "one" she could lower my interest rate. Thus began a relationship that continues to this day.
I have tried numerous tactics to get Rachel to stop harassing me. At first I hung up the phone. Then I pressed "one" and politely asked to never be called again. Then I pressed "one" and rudely asked never to be called again. At some point I was given an option "three" that supposedly would cause the calls to stop. I selected option "three" several times. The calls did not stop. I did an Internet search on "Rachel from cardholder services". I got millions of hits, most of them from 2009. No one had found a successful strategy for getting Rachel to stop.
Some people had run down names, addresses, and phone numbers for the people behind Rachel. The FTC had supposedly shut down these operations (at least one in Florida and one in Arizona). But the calls keep coming. A number of the posts were from "troubleshooter" people associated with newspapers or TV stations. They were unsuccessful. A couple of tech savvy people had apparently run down identity information on the people behind Rachel. But none of this has stopped nor, as far as I can tell, even slowed these people down.
This is a scam. If you go along you will be asked for your credit card number and your social security number. One of the tip offs that this was a scam was that they don't know the name of the bank that issued your credit card. And the two pieces of information you least want to give people who are at a minimum unethical are your credit card number and your social security number. But if you ware stupid enough to do this you will be offered a credit card for a different company with a low "teaser" rate. I'm sure the rate goes up quickly to one that is higher than your current rate. That's how they make their money, from kick backs from the company that issues your new credit card. They may also get money from selling your old credit card number and social security number to crooks. I don't know that they do this but I wouldn't be surprised.
Now theoretically what you should do is file a complaint with the FTC. You can do this at www.ftc.gov. But the form asks you the name and phone number of the company you are complaining about. You will NOT be able to get this information from the person who answers the phone on behalf of Rachel. So the complaint is pretty much useless. If it was useful Rachel would have been shut down years ago. Also the FTC makes you jump through hoops before you can even fill out the form. The FTC has been rendered pretty much toothless by the "get the government off your back" crowd. So that doesn't work either. In spite of all this, I twice filed complaints with the FTC about Rachel.
The FTC run "Do Not Call" list is also supposed to provide some protection from Rachel. I have been on the "Do Not Call" list almost since the day it was created. It doesn't work very well. I also get repeated robocalls from a company that offers to clean my ducts. For whatever reason, I have not gone after them as hard as I have tried to go after Rachel. Then there are the various calls from other businesses (rare), charitable solicitations (more often and exempted, I believe, from the "Do Not Call" law), and pollsters (very frequently since it is politics season and also, exempted, I believe). I also saw something on the web about a Credit Card exemption in the "Do Not Call" law. I am not sure this is correct. If it is, it shouldn't be there but I wouldn't be surprised if it was. So "Do Not Call" doesn't stop Rachel.
I don't have caller ID on my phone. It is an extra charge that I don't see why I should have to pay. But I understand that if you do have caller ID you either get a "blocked" (bad enough) or a fake number. Apparently the Rachel people have the technology that allows them to substitute a different number on the caller ID display. This is one of the many ways they hide their identity. So caller ID doesn't work either.
If you press "one" you are eventually connected to a live person. Most of the time when you contact a company and get through to a live person you get a call center employee. I have a lot of sympathy for call center employees in general. The job doesn't pay very well and usually comes with no benefits at all. Generally these employees are polite and will try to be helpful. Unfortunately they work in a straight jacket of rules that guarantee they have almost no power. They are not responsible for the defective product or bad service you received but all they are allowed to do is "take the information". And many times they are paid more if they can keep calls short. So they can't even stay on the line while you vent. All in all, most call center employees are involved in a thankless job. They know it and would trade up in a minute to a better job if they could get one. But especially in this economy that is hard to do. So that's the story with call center employees in general.
But it is NOT the story with Rachel people. Usually they cut me off as soon as they figure out that I am not going to fall for the scam. Lately I have started being abusive as nothing else has worked. And on two occasions they have retaliated. In the first case after I abused one of them I got a call a few minutes later. In talking to the person I was eventually able to figure out the the Rachel person had given out my number to someone who had called in and told them I would take care of them. And then today I got my morning Rachel call. I abused the person who came on the line. Then I got a call again from Rachel an hour or so later. In this case the Rachel people are in on the scam so don't feel you are under any obligation to be nice to anyone you get through to on a Rachel call. They are NOT the usual innocent call center employee just trying to get by.
Then there is the question of whether the Rachel operation is legal under current law. I believe the answer is no. They are engaged in deceptive practices. They are required by law to disclose the name and location of the company they represent. They won't do that. They are also involved in "bait and switch". That is, if you don't listen closely they give the impression that they represent your current credit card company. But they don't. They claim they can "reduce the interest rate on your current credit card". They can't. They can switch you to a different credit card that may have a lower rate for a short time. But they can't change anything about your current credit card. They don't even know what your current credit card is unless you tell them. They know very little about you. They are doing what is called a "cold call". They then try to extract information from you that they have no right to.
So what do they know about you? They know your phone number. They called it. And there are various "white pages" services on the Internet that will supply a name and address to go with your phone number. So they know your name (or at least the name of the person owning the phone number) and your address. They will try to use that information to get credit card, social security, and whatever additional information out of you they can. Don't give it to them.
There are various law enforcement agencies that are supposed to shut this kind of thing down. I have alluded to the toothlessness of the lead Federal agency, the FTC, on this manner. The lead state agency is the Attorney General's office. Florida and Arizona are notorious for being "business friendly" states. For about 100 years Florida has been known as the home of some of the most outrageous real estate scams in the country. Arizona has seen more than its share of scams (Google "Keating 5" for a good example). It's real estate market is one of the worst in the country in part due to a long standing pattern of "pro growth" real estate regulation. So it is not surprising to find that they are identified with Rachel. As for the other states, it is very hard for a state agency to deal with this kind of cross state problem.
Finally, lets not let the phone companies off the hook. Their lobbyists have been very effective at making sure the laws, both at the federal and state level are pretty toothless. 800 service is not the moneymaker it used to be. But 800 use represents a revenue stream that is still valuable and profitable to the phone companies. It would be nice if consumers could block this kind of thing. But the phone companies listen to the 800 companies and the congress listens to the phone company lobbyists. If you surveyed consumers they would have preferred the "Do Not Call": law to have fewer exemptions and for the penalties to be harsher. But congress works for lobbyists not voters.
So what is to be done. If you are not one of Rachel's victims, count your lucky stars. If you are, feel free to heap as much abuse on the Rachel operator as your creativity can come up with. This is a business that only is profitable if costs are low. The time you spend with an actual person is the most expensive part of the operation. So spend as much time with them (without buying anything or giving out any information) as you can. If the Rachel call center costs go up without an increase in sales the whole operation becomes less profitable and might get shut down. And feel free to abuse the operators in any way your imagination can come up with and your conscience permits. They are not the usual innocents. They are in on it. They are knowingly working for a criminal enterprise. Their income, such as it is, comes from crime. They are criminals and should be treated as such. I do have another idea. But it is pretty harsh. I don't want to go there if I don't have to.
Thursday, February 16, 2012
Friday, February 10, 2012
Eastwood Superbowl Commercial
I have a Tivo so I normally don't watch commercials. And I'm not much of a football fan so I don't watch many games. But I have been using the Superbowl as an excuse to visit my sister for years. And you have to watch the commercials. In fact, many people claim the commercials are the reason they watch the game. And the Eastwood commercial has generated a lot of talk, justifiably so. It's a great commercial. Like most things, context is important.
I remember watching the game a year ago when this commercial came on: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKL254Y_jtc It just blew me away. This is not a typical commercial. Most commercials bang you over the head with the product they are selling. Since this commercial is for Chrysler you would expect to see a bunch of pictures of Chrysler cars. They are in there but what's really being sold is the City of Detroit. So what's going on? Chrysler is not even the biggest car company in Detroit. Well, Chrysler is now owned by Fiat, an Italian company. I'm sure they are worried about being seen as a bad old foreign company that has taken over a true blue "Made in America" company. So this add is an attempt to generate some good will as a counter.
And Detroit has fallen on really hard times. An attempt by someone, any one, to buck up its spirits is a good thing. Detroit used to have a lot of money. So it has some really interesting architecture. I was happy to see that showcased. And it's just a damn good add by any measure. I don't know that I expected Chrysler to do something similar at the Superbowl this year. But the commercial they did last year has stuck with me even though I only saw it the one time.
So there I am watching the game this year and this commercial (http://www.5min.com/Video/Chrysler---Clint-Eastwood---Super-Bowl-Commercial-517263677) comes on. My first question was "Is that Clint Eastwood?". It didn't take long for me to figure out that it was. And by that time I am completely sucked into the add. And as the add evolved I started seeing the parallels to the add from a year ago. So I confidently announced that it was a Chrysler add as the others watching with me were confused. There are some Chrysler logos at the end of the add. And, if you are really good you can identify the vehicles shown in the add as all being Chrysler products. But it's not obvious. You see the front wheel of a vehicle for a few seconds. I assumed was a Jeep but that's just because by this time I had figured out that it was a Chrysler add. And like the add from a year ago, I really liked it. But I figured it was just an add. I didn't think there was any reason that it would blow up to be a big political thing. Silly me. Everything is now political.
The next day Carl Rove and other GOP types are all over the air waves opining that it was some kind of Obama or Democratic plot. Really? Clint Eastwood has been well known for decades for being a rock ribbed Republican. He is no fool so he isn't going to be conned into doing something he doesn't want to. He is rich enough and famous enough he doesn't need the paycheck or the publicity. He has since indicated that he stands by the content of the commercial and that he donated the money to charity. So what about the contents of the commercial?
When I saw it I saw it as an expansion of the theme from a year ago. The older commercial focused on Detroit. I felt that the new commercial expanded its scope to encompass the whole country. I thought the "half time" idea was great. The idea is that it is half time in the big game. The first half has not gone so well. But with the right adjustments we can win the second half and the game. I think this is a good analogy and a good idea. But it interferes with the GOP narrative that whatever Obama says or does is wrong. So any idea that he has done something right in the past or might do something right in the future (the second half) has to be batted down immediately and vigorously.
I didn't find any of the sentiments expressed in the commercial noticeably different than what you can hear spouted in any number of Clint Eastwood westerns or cop movies. And it's not just Clint. You can hear the same kind of thing in John Wayne westerns and hundreds of other movies churned out by Hollywood in the last 75 years. It is all standard "hero" stuff.
I was particularly struck by one thing Eastwood said, however. "This country can't be knocked out with one punch. We get right back up and when we do the world is going to hear the roar of our engines". I have been waiting for this sentiment to be expressed for over ten years. My profoundest thanks to Mr. Eastwood for finally doing it.
So 9/11 was a jab at best. And what did we do? Did we get right back up. No! Instead we have spent years whimpering on the floor afraid of our shadow like the whiny guy in westerns that we hate because he is such a wuss. The media had a lot to do with this. They hyped the event like it was Armageddon. It wasn't. They told us over and over that we should "be afraid - be very afraid". They did not permit anyone to be heard that might have voiced a contrary opinion. One reason for this was that it happened in New york City, a major media market. But it wasn't just the media. President Bush did a terrible job of leadership in this trying time.
He encouraged over reaction. I was in favor of Afghanistan but it was obvious to me that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. We put in all those stupid "security" restrictions on airports. We threw all of our privacy away and built up a domestic spying system that is far beyond anything that has been done before. And its all secret so no one knows what it is doing besides costing tens of billions of dollars per year, more per year than the value of all the property destroyed on 9/11. He also accused anyone who disagreed with him of being unpatriotic. 9/11 was a terrorist act. It was designed to spread terror. Thanks to the media and the Bush administration it succeeded beyond Bin Laden's wildest expectation.
And consider this, what if we had really gone after Bin Laden at Tora Bora? We could have killed or captured him less than a year after 9/11. But for Bush he was not that important. It was more important to start the buildup for the Iraq war. Instead we got him ten years and hundreds of billion dollars later. The death of Bin Laden has finally brought a measure of closure to 9/11. We are finally "getting right back up". And our engines are now roaring. General Motors is again the largest car company in the world.
And what about Eastwood himself? Many still think of him as Dirty Harry. But who is he really? Looking at the modern Eastwood I note two movies he has made recently. In "Gran Torino" his character starts out as a classic "Dirty Harry" type redneck. By the end he has befriended and is protecting some Hmong immigrants from Cambodia. This is contrary to the current rabid anti-immigrant stance of the Republican party. He also did a movie called "Letters from Iwo Jima". This is a sympathetic portrait of the famous World War II battle for the island of Iwo Jima that is told from the Japanese point of view. All red blooded true blue all Americans know that this event can only be told in the most heroic terms and exclusively from the American point of view.
Both of these movies and many others indicate that Eastwood's thinking is more subtle and sophisticated than many would have believed possible. One way to look at "Gran Torino" is as a standard "stalwart hero takes good but downtrodden folk under his wing and defends them from the big bad guys". And similar things can be said about "Letters from Iwo Jima". There was great heroism demonstrated on Iwo Jima by American soldiers. And I subscribe to the "the Japanese were the bad guys and behaved barbarically" school of thought. But that does not mean that there weren't good people doing heroic things on their side.
So maybe there is more to Eastwood that people think. But let's pretend that we have the "new - enlightened" Eastwood as opposed to the "old - Dirty Harry" Eastwood. Does that idea stand up? Well it turns out that there is more to Eastwood than most people think even back then. The same year Eastwood did "Dirty Harry" (1971) he also did something called "Play Misty for Me". Misty is characterized as a "psychological thriller", which sounds generally "Dirty Harry"-like. But many would also characterize the move as "arty".
It gets worse for the "Dirty Harry" scenario. Let's just stick with the "Dirty Harry" movies and look at the second movie in the series "Magnum Force" (1973). It has a suitably macho title. But the movie is about vigilantism. There is a secret group of cops that are taking the law into their hands and dealing out justice to bad guys. Sound's like Harry's kind of thing. But in the movie Harry is opposed to vigilante justice and takes his fellow cops down. So Dirty "let's stop molly coddling the bad guys" Harry himself ends up coming down on the side of due process and all that sort of "soft on crime" thing. Harry is not as Dirty as people think.
Finally, let me go back to the original "Dirty Harry". At it's core it is a standard "lone wolf battles the bad guys" movie. And a typical feature of these types of movies is that the lone wolf is up against not only the bad guys but the system. Either the bad guys are the system or the system is corrupt or incompetent. The justification for why the system opposes the hero differs from movie to movie but its almost always there. Viewed in this manner "Dirty Harry" is cut from a pretty normal bolt of cloth. So what caused all the uproar?
Eastwood, when he was publicizing the movie, stirred things up by saying something along the lines that the criminal justice system seemed tilted in favor of protecting the rights of the accused and against protecting victims. This view is what cemented the connection between the movie and conservatives. But in my opinion the events depicted in the movie do not support Eastwood's contention. Harry spends all his time chasing the bad guy and no time doing anything particularly victim oriented. This is what cops, good and bad, do in movies. How is Harry's behavior any different than a hundred cops in a hundred cop shows? So there is really nothing different going on with the action. The bad guy is bad. Harry is picked on. Harry gets the bad guy in the end.
There is a "law and order" subtext to the movie. But my conclusion is that if Harry and his associates were better cops they would have got the bad guy much sooner. There is a big "stake out" scene early in the movie. If the cops had done this competently they would have caught the bad guy then. And generally standard police procedure properly done would have caught the bad guy as quickly or more quickly as Harry's supposedly superior "bend the rules" methods. But if the bad guy had been caught early there would not have been a movie. And much of the plot is driven by the needs of making an exciting and visually interesting film. And Eastwood's remarks generated buzz, which generated ticket sales, which made Eastwood and the studio happy. So Eastwood's remarks were a smart move all around.
It says a lot about the current state of the union that this commercial has generated so much talk. I do not think that was the intention of Chrysler, Mr. Eastwood, or anyone else involved in it. They were just trying to make a dramatic and effective feel good commercial. I think Chrysler intended to reinforce and broaden the statement they made with the first commercial, which was uniformly lauded. I think Mr. Eastwood was happy to come on board and the sentiments expressed in the commercial are consistent with his beliefs.
I think everyone involved with the making of the commercial was surprised with the political reaction. I think they thought they had done work they could be proud of and would have welcomed a positive critical reaction. But I think they all thought they were engaged in a nonpolitical endeavor. Since the controversy has erupted Mr. Eastwood has indicated that he has no objection to anyone, Democrat, Republican, or whatever, making use of the commercial's contents. I don't think there is anything objectionable in the commercial to a traditional conservative like Mr. Eastwood. But the Republican party has strayed so far from traditional conservative values that they see the sentiments expressed in the commercial as a threat to them and an attack on their beliefs. Initially liberals asked themselves what the fuss was about. Now they are happy to embrace the sentiments Mr. Eastwood has so eloquently expressed.
I remember watching the game a year ago when this commercial came on: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKL254Y_jtc It just blew me away. This is not a typical commercial. Most commercials bang you over the head with the product they are selling. Since this commercial is for Chrysler you would expect to see a bunch of pictures of Chrysler cars. They are in there but what's really being sold is the City of Detroit. So what's going on? Chrysler is not even the biggest car company in Detroit. Well, Chrysler is now owned by Fiat, an Italian company. I'm sure they are worried about being seen as a bad old foreign company that has taken over a true blue "Made in America" company. So this add is an attempt to generate some good will as a counter.
And Detroit has fallen on really hard times. An attempt by someone, any one, to buck up its spirits is a good thing. Detroit used to have a lot of money. So it has some really interesting architecture. I was happy to see that showcased. And it's just a damn good add by any measure. I don't know that I expected Chrysler to do something similar at the Superbowl this year. But the commercial they did last year has stuck with me even though I only saw it the one time.
So there I am watching the game this year and this commercial (http://www.5min.com/Video/Chrysler---Clint-Eastwood---Super-Bowl-Commercial-517263677) comes on. My first question was "Is that Clint Eastwood?". It didn't take long for me to figure out that it was. And by that time I am completely sucked into the add. And as the add evolved I started seeing the parallels to the add from a year ago. So I confidently announced that it was a Chrysler add as the others watching with me were confused. There are some Chrysler logos at the end of the add. And, if you are really good you can identify the vehicles shown in the add as all being Chrysler products. But it's not obvious. You see the front wheel of a vehicle for a few seconds. I assumed was a Jeep but that's just because by this time I had figured out that it was a Chrysler add. And like the add from a year ago, I really liked it. But I figured it was just an add. I didn't think there was any reason that it would blow up to be a big political thing. Silly me. Everything is now political.
The next day Carl Rove and other GOP types are all over the air waves opining that it was some kind of Obama or Democratic plot. Really? Clint Eastwood has been well known for decades for being a rock ribbed Republican. He is no fool so he isn't going to be conned into doing something he doesn't want to. He is rich enough and famous enough he doesn't need the paycheck or the publicity. He has since indicated that he stands by the content of the commercial and that he donated the money to charity. So what about the contents of the commercial?
When I saw it I saw it as an expansion of the theme from a year ago. The older commercial focused on Detroit. I felt that the new commercial expanded its scope to encompass the whole country. I thought the "half time" idea was great. The idea is that it is half time in the big game. The first half has not gone so well. But with the right adjustments we can win the second half and the game. I think this is a good analogy and a good idea. But it interferes with the GOP narrative that whatever Obama says or does is wrong. So any idea that he has done something right in the past or might do something right in the future (the second half) has to be batted down immediately and vigorously.
I didn't find any of the sentiments expressed in the commercial noticeably different than what you can hear spouted in any number of Clint Eastwood westerns or cop movies. And it's not just Clint. You can hear the same kind of thing in John Wayne westerns and hundreds of other movies churned out by Hollywood in the last 75 years. It is all standard "hero" stuff.
I was particularly struck by one thing Eastwood said, however. "This country can't be knocked out with one punch. We get right back up and when we do the world is going to hear the roar of our engines". I have been waiting for this sentiment to be expressed for over ten years. My profoundest thanks to Mr. Eastwood for finally doing it.
So 9/11 was a jab at best. And what did we do? Did we get right back up. No! Instead we have spent years whimpering on the floor afraid of our shadow like the whiny guy in westerns that we hate because he is such a wuss. The media had a lot to do with this. They hyped the event like it was Armageddon. It wasn't. They told us over and over that we should "be afraid - be very afraid". They did not permit anyone to be heard that might have voiced a contrary opinion. One reason for this was that it happened in New york City, a major media market. But it wasn't just the media. President Bush did a terrible job of leadership in this trying time.
He encouraged over reaction. I was in favor of Afghanistan but it was obvious to me that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. We put in all those stupid "security" restrictions on airports. We threw all of our privacy away and built up a domestic spying system that is far beyond anything that has been done before. And its all secret so no one knows what it is doing besides costing tens of billions of dollars per year, more per year than the value of all the property destroyed on 9/11. He also accused anyone who disagreed with him of being unpatriotic. 9/11 was a terrorist act. It was designed to spread terror. Thanks to the media and the Bush administration it succeeded beyond Bin Laden's wildest expectation.
And consider this, what if we had really gone after Bin Laden at Tora Bora? We could have killed or captured him less than a year after 9/11. But for Bush he was not that important. It was more important to start the buildup for the Iraq war. Instead we got him ten years and hundreds of billion dollars later. The death of Bin Laden has finally brought a measure of closure to 9/11. We are finally "getting right back up". And our engines are now roaring. General Motors is again the largest car company in the world.
And what about Eastwood himself? Many still think of him as Dirty Harry. But who is he really? Looking at the modern Eastwood I note two movies he has made recently. In "Gran Torino" his character starts out as a classic "Dirty Harry" type redneck. By the end he has befriended and is protecting some Hmong immigrants from Cambodia. This is contrary to the current rabid anti-immigrant stance of the Republican party. He also did a movie called "Letters from Iwo Jima". This is a sympathetic portrait of the famous World War II battle for the island of Iwo Jima that is told from the Japanese point of view. All red blooded true blue all Americans know that this event can only be told in the most heroic terms and exclusively from the American point of view.
Both of these movies and many others indicate that Eastwood's thinking is more subtle and sophisticated than many would have believed possible. One way to look at "Gran Torino" is as a standard "stalwart hero takes good but downtrodden folk under his wing and defends them from the big bad guys". And similar things can be said about "Letters from Iwo Jima". There was great heroism demonstrated on Iwo Jima by American soldiers. And I subscribe to the "the Japanese were the bad guys and behaved barbarically" school of thought. But that does not mean that there weren't good people doing heroic things on their side.
So maybe there is more to Eastwood that people think. But let's pretend that we have the "new - enlightened" Eastwood as opposed to the "old - Dirty Harry" Eastwood. Does that idea stand up? Well it turns out that there is more to Eastwood than most people think even back then. The same year Eastwood did "Dirty Harry" (1971) he also did something called "Play Misty for Me". Misty is characterized as a "psychological thriller", which sounds generally "Dirty Harry"-like. But many would also characterize the move as "arty".
It gets worse for the "Dirty Harry" scenario. Let's just stick with the "Dirty Harry" movies and look at the second movie in the series "Magnum Force" (1973). It has a suitably macho title. But the movie is about vigilantism. There is a secret group of cops that are taking the law into their hands and dealing out justice to bad guys. Sound's like Harry's kind of thing. But in the movie Harry is opposed to vigilante justice and takes his fellow cops down. So Dirty "let's stop molly coddling the bad guys" Harry himself ends up coming down on the side of due process and all that sort of "soft on crime" thing. Harry is not as Dirty as people think.
Finally, let me go back to the original "Dirty Harry". At it's core it is a standard "lone wolf battles the bad guys" movie. And a typical feature of these types of movies is that the lone wolf is up against not only the bad guys but the system. Either the bad guys are the system or the system is corrupt or incompetent. The justification for why the system opposes the hero differs from movie to movie but its almost always there. Viewed in this manner "Dirty Harry" is cut from a pretty normal bolt of cloth. So what caused all the uproar?
Eastwood, when he was publicizing the movie, stirred things up by saying something along the lines that the criminal justice system seemed tilted in favor of protecting the rights of the accused and against protecting victims. This view is what cemented the connection between the movie and conservatives. But in my opinion the events depicted in the movie do not support Eastwood's contention. Harry spends all his time chasing the bad guy and no time doing anything particularly victim oriented. This is what cops, good and bad, do in movies. How is Harry's behavior any different than a hundred cops in a hundred cop shows? So there is really nothing different going on with the action. The bad guy is bad. Harry is picked on. Harry gets the bad guy in the end.
There is a "law and order" subtext to the movie. But my conclusion is that if Harry and his associates were better cops they would have got the bad guy much sooner. There is a big "stake out" scene early in the movie. If the cops had done this competently they would have caught the bad guy then. And generally standard police procedure properly done would have caught the bad guy as quickly or more quickly as Harry's supposedly superior "bend the rules" methods. But if the bad guy had been caught early there would not have been a movie. And much of the plot is driven by the needs of making an exciting and visually interesting film. And Eastwood's remarks generated buzz, which generated ticket sales, which made Eastwood and the studio happy. So Eastwood's remarks were a smart move all around.
It says a lot about the current state of the union that this commercial has generated so much talk. I do not think that was the intention of Chrysler, Mr. Eastwood, or anyone else involved in it. They were just trying to make a dramatic and effective feel good commercial. I think Chrysler intended to reinforce and broaden the statement they made with the first commercial, which was uniformly lauded. I think Mr. Eastwood was happy to come on board and the sentiments expressed in the commercial are consistent with his beliefs.
I think everyone involved with the making of the commercial was surprised with the political reaction. I think they thought they had done work they could be proud of and would have welcomed a positive critical reaction. But I think they all thought they were engaged in a nonpolitical endeavor. Since the controversy has erupted Mr. Eastwood has indicated that he has no objection to anyone, Democrat, Republican, or whatever, making use of the commercial's contents. I don't think there is anything objectionable in the commercial to a traditional conservative like Mr. Eastwood. But the Republican party has strayed so far from traditional conservative values that they see the sentiments expressed in the commercial as a threat to them and an attack on their beliefs. Initially liberals asked themselves what the fuss was about. Now they are happy to embrace the sentiments Mr. Eastwood has so eloquently expressed.
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