Two Americas

No, I am not referring to the famous iteration of the "two Americas" that was articulated by John Edwards.  This is a reference to the two Americas exhibited in the commercials during the Super Bowl.  From Owen Strachan at The American Spectator:

The Super Bowl commercials this year gave indisputable evidence of the, shall-we-say, “liberated” version, the modern America (I’ll call it the Calvin Klein America). One minute we were watching Joe Flacco, the no-nonsense, very tough Ravens quarterback throw a deep bomb for a touchdown; the next we were watching a pompadoured man contort himself like a hairless pretzel in nothing but Calvin Klein underpants. The theme of unbridled sexuality continued apace throughout the night. A man sneaking his way out of bed following a one-night stand returned to get his t-shirt from his now-discarded paramour; women shed untold layers of clothing in countless commercials for endless iterations of CSI; and then there was the halftime show, when a talented wife and mother power-writhed her way around the stage in a performance that was half-Amazon, half-striptease. 

It was disheartening if you’re even vaguely traditional/biblical/moral in your thinking. Twitter, the new Nielsen rating, reflected this, at least in my evangelical corner of things, with people of all ages—many of them young—disconsolate over our version of Herod’s post-supper entertainment.

And the other America:

But there’s a John the Baptist in our midst, and his name is Paul Harvey. Here was the second America, the one that prizes honor and nobility, roaring to life. It’s the first and oldest America, and we’ll call it the Ram America. The “So God Made a Farmer” commercial for the Dodge Ram popped up in the lights-out halftime show and blew many circuits of its own. I’ve simply not seen a better commercial. It’s a worldview in a truck ad:

God said I need somebody willing to get up before dawn, milk the cows, work all day in the field, milk cows again, eat supper then go to town and stay past midnight at a meeting of the school board–so God made a farmer.

First impression: Paul Harvey was an amazing writer. I know of him and respect him, but I probably speak for many in the younger crowd when I say I haven’t heard a lot of his material. His celebration of the farmer, the figure representing the heart of traditional American perseverance and virtue, moved me to my core.

I find it reassuring that there was some much outcry against some of the commercials described above and so much praised heaped on the ones featuring virtue, Godliness, and the good.