Substantially less than mollified

A few weeks after I contacted VW to let them know how unsavory their new fast ads are, one of their lackeys responded:

Thank you for sharing your comments with our Volkswagen website. We have noted your concerns and would like to apologize if you found the nature of this ad offensive.

We here at Volkswagen of America strive to share the experience of our brand of driving excitement to Volkswagen Enthusiast's [sic] through clever and innovative spots, created by a refreshing and entertaining national advertising campaign.

Please accept our apology, once again. We appreciate your submission and invite you to visit again soon!

Ivan
Volktalk

Right, I must have forgotten somewhere between 7th grade English and graduate studies in literature that "clever and innovative" means "discriminatory and retrograde." Somehow I am neither refreshed, nor entertained by their women-hating.

I hate to be the one to point fingers, but it feels like our country's current administration has something to do with the market's embrace of what seems best described as a "fuck all, I'm the MAN" attitude promoted on a rash of commercials today. That in this era of testosterone-charged machismo, we've ushered in a crueler, more violent national creed. In a nation where the media defines every political policy as a "War," where the president gads about in a Top Gun costume, where torture becomes a new American export, and where wars on foreign territory stand in for foreign policy, it is not surprising that violence has become the new American ideal.

And so I see the VW "fast" as part of a crop of violent and destructive ads, such as the ad promoting the new Gap store in Manhattan featuring out-of-control customers and employees gleefully destroying the old building, or the Toyota ad which hypes larger than life destruction with a meteor careering into the earth, or the energy drink ad showcasing a robotic scare-crow blasting away farm vermin, including hippies.

I could go on; violence has become such a norm that we are nearly blind to its subtle variants of discrimination, such that marketers can label this violence as "refreshing," "entertaining," and "innovative."

He wails.

Last night we saw the most fly trumpet player out there: Roy Hargrove. I know his music, but had not seen him in person before. I had read that he'd been playing professionally for fourteen years; so I expected to see someone in their fifties. Instead, a most dapper 33 year-old walks on stage wearing a Borsalino; describing his fawn colored suit, the slim-legged pants, untucked shirt and chocolate tie will accomplish nothing. Each piece was distinguishable: the tie was slightly shorter, slimmer and darker than convention, the pants gave him an almost Fred Astaire look, the shirt in cream with pleats down the front (Though M. thinks perhaps the pleats were actually new shirt creases. Either way: a statement.).
I've been in the area long enough to remember going to Yoshi's at their previous location; but the memory has faded. I can no longer summon the building's exterior, its street address, or distinguishing features other than the dimly-lit low stage surrounded by cocktail tables. I remember being slightly put off by the industrial size of the new Yoshi's: the field-size restaurant, the brighter jazz area, the slick new image. But none of this matters, really. We are incredibly lucky to have such a jazz house in downtown Oakland, where music plays three-hundred and sixty-three nights a year. Where anyone and everyone is welcome to hear jazz masters and innovators, local and far-flung talent, the elders and the youngsters.
Roy Hargrove is one of those young elders; long of experience, short of tooth. Listening to his music is like being in the middle of hailing shards of glass: his trumpet spits out jagged sounds that fall over one another pell-mell. Entrancing music with an undercurrent of violence that makes you think, just briefly, about taking cover.