Super ButtHurt

By now, you've probably heard about the foofaraw the Clint Eastwood commercial during halftime at the "Super Bowl" created.

 

Most notably, Karl Rove's "disappointment" with respect to the implied political message that Eastwood is endorsing a second Obama term.

 

Now, the ad itself is pretty inocuous, as political ads go-- assuming you want to call it that, which I'm not ready to. Eastwood narrates a script about "halftime in America" and how Detroit has fought back and so can the country. (transcribed here)

 

It's more of a pep talk than a political ad. That's not to say there isn't an undertone of gratitude for Obama's bailout of Chrysler. That is part of the backdrop. If Obama hadn't bailed them out, they wouldn't have the money to sell cars by running advertisements.

 

And interestingly, Eastwood had criticized the bailouts, yet here he is, getting up in ol' Karl's paranoid face about comebacks. Here's where I suspect Rove gets his panties in a twist:

I’ve seen a lot of tough eras, a lot of downturns in my life. And, times when we didn’t understand each other. It seems like we’ve lost our heart at times. When the fog of division, discord, and blame made it hard to see what lies ahead.

Given the toxic nature of rhetoric from Rove's party, particularly the Teabaggers, it's hard not to take a comment like that personally, especially since Rove himself has rattled his chains over some of the nonsense that people like Sarah Palin and Rick perry have spouted.

Rove would be on firmer ground if he critiqued the soon-to-be-released film Act of Valor which features a Navy SEAL team sent in to rescue a kidnapped ambassador, which actually features real SEALs. That seems to be a pretty blatant attempt to remind the American people about Obama's foreign policy, which has been effective and has completed steps that the Bush administration...you know, the people Rove worked for?...could only have dreamed of doing.

Still, to me, Rove's complaint about the Chrysler ad sounds more like "Why in the hell didn't I think of that?"