Ordnungspolizei

In watching the super bowl last night I, along with others, was charmed by most of the commercials.  I was quite surprised that CBS didn’t duck on playing the Tebow commercial even after the leftist attack squads attempted to destroy his mothers reputation.  Publicly calling her a liar and a whore although they had no proof of this because… well… because, that’s what they do, I guess.   That “anything for the cause” mentality is why this commercial scares the hell out of me:

I get the joke.  Really I do.  Satirical over reaction to the green movement.  Show that your product complies even with these impossibly high standards. Buy our cars, save the environment.  Look we even have a cute mascot in Andy the Anteater.  The scary part is that in looking around I see people who are “ok” with this.  Not people that thought that reaction to the commercial is overblown.  Not people who saw the commercial as just a cute knockoff of other police parodies.  People who can’t wait for the day that these kinds of rules are enforced in just this way.  Seriously.  I get that there are people on the right who are crazily obsessed with avoiding this.   Unfortunately, I think that some of them aren’t so far off base.  As long as those extreme leftist views are out there.  As long as they are fighting to pull the rest of us down to their level.  As long as they don’t care who they hurt in accomplishing the goals set before them I can’t find these things funny at all.

Of course, the more egregious error lies in the title of this post.  The Ordnungspolizei or OrPo were the regular German police during Nazi Germany.  They were absorbed into the Nazi Police forces and were called the Grüne Polizei or “Green Police” due to the color of their uniforms. They reported to the SS. They committed atrocities against both Jews and Cahtolics and were responsible for several million civilian deaths.  Audi, who sponsors the ads should know this but doesn’t seem to care.  Chanting the lyrics “green police” is the same as chanting “nazi”, “nazi”, “nazi”. It’s a catchy tune, it’s a cutesy commercial, it’s inherently wrong.  Seriously people, get a fucking grip.  I can see some blind and poorly schooled left coast production company coming up with a catchy slogan like this but Audi?  A German Car company?   OF COURSE they recognize the connection. Of course they don’t care.  Of course they’re feeding on  the mass hysteria.  Of course they believe that any furor over a super bowl ad is good press. Wrong.

When the ad played last night, we watched it.  In the first scene we all kind of smiled because we were in the mood to watch over the top Super Bowl ads.  By the third scene no one was smiling and people in the room stopped chatting to watch.  When the ad finished playing there was complete silence for about 10 seconds before some one said, “ugh”.  It sounded like he had been gut punched. I didn’t see where he was that far off.

To be honest, Audi hasn’t lost me as a customer.  They never had me to begin with.  It’s a crap car and I wouldn’t ever buy one. I spent one whole summer working on a friends Audi every weekend.  Not tweaking it… just keeping it running.   That said, I can’t help but associate people who DO drive them with this insensitive and horrifying celebration of one of the most murderous groups in history.  Got one?  Sell it.  Haven’t bought one yet?  Don’t.

UPDATE: Someone pointed out that I scooped Michele Malkin on this but even she didn’t make the same connection that I did. Scary.

Public Domain Images from Wikipedia.  In order of appearance:

1) Flag of the Nazi Ordnungpolizei (Orpo) "Order Police", the name for the uniformed regular German police force in existence during the period of Nazi Germany 1936–1945.

2) Ordnungspolizei conducting a raid in Cracow’s Jewish Ghetto, January 1941.