I went to see “Burn After Reading” last night (I give it a “meh” btw) and while munching on my popcorn eager to see the previews, I had the unfortunate misfortune of being subject to this “music video” on the big screen with surround sound.
But before you even get to the video, the picture they’ve chosen for the site, with Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Kid Rock on either side of an African American National Guardsman just makes me scratch my head considering the public outcry advancing the perspective that minorities are treated as merely cannon fodder for the military.
And what Dale Earnhardt Jr. has to do with being a “warrior” I do not know. Kid Rock is at least (and I do mean least) performing the song. The whole thing it just…gah…it burns!
The National Guard is one of Earnhardt’s major sponsors, which explains that part of it.
I agree with you that the video is over-the-top emotional manipulation. I see it as a way to raise consciousness of the “citizen-soldiers” who are activated at a moment’s notice to do what’s asked of them. I didn’t notice the black Guardsman specifically, but there are others, including a white male and a woman, so it may have been a clumsy attempt at inclusion.
Given that I’m married to an Air National Guardsman, my view is probably not universal. I just saw the video as a way to make people aware of the Guard and what its members do.
I didn’t - and won’t - view the video on the website. Is this the one where the Generic Arab Kids roll a soccer ball in front of the moving US Army convoy? And the convoy STOPS, and the gunner from the lead HMMV gets out to pick up the soccer ball and had it back to the kids? Proclaiming that that’s our mission in the world: to promote traffic safety and fetch lost soccer balls from the safety of an armored vehicle filled with armed soldiers?
Because that one got me into all kinds of trouble when we saw it in the theater. I really thought the folks sitting in front of me were going to forcibly eject me.
A friend and I saw this video when we went to see “Tropic Thunder” a few weeks back, and we both had the same WTF reaction to why Dale Earnhardt was in a video promoting the National Guard. Being in the heart of NASCAR country, though, we’re used to seeing NASCAR used to promote damn near everything.
I’m pretty sure this ran across the country. I saw it in the Bay Area, not exactly Nascar territory.
Clearly I’m not in their demographic, but the ad succeeded in encouraging me not to enlist. It wouldn’t be so bad if it was a TV commercial, but this fucking thing went on for several minutes. Fuck Kid Rock, and fuck the National Guard for making me watch it.
Saw it last night. Thinking basically two things: Sometimes I’m happy to have left the 18-25 age bracket - and that “we stopped the convoy to return a soccer ball” is a Really Bad Way to start an after-action report following an ambush.
That’s a weird area, the place in U.S. culture that sits at the intersection of the National Guard, NASCAR racing, and the mediocre song stylings of Kid Rock.
I don’t know how the recruitment figures look, but I can only imagine it’s pretty hard to get people to sign up for the Guard these days.
Somehow I don’t think Kid Rock thinks of the same things I do when he’s singing about ‘Liberty slipping away’ or the video would end with a “Yes we can!”
I saw this thing ahead of Tropic Thunder also, and this isn’t exactly NASCAR country, so I’m sure it’s playing everywhere. I thought about pitting it but I decided I was too pissed to say anything coherent about it - what really made me mad was the selling of the National Guard as a bunch of headbanging “WARRIEEEURS!” What the fuck? Since when?? Isn’t that more like, I don’t know, the Army or Marines? I always thought the National Guard was more for emergencies, disaster relief and that kind of thing. They’ve gotten sucked into Iraq because it’s a total clusterfuck that borders on being totally unplanned.
One of the downsides to seeing a LOT of movies in the theater is that I’ve seen this dozens of times, and I amuse myself by picturing David Patrick Kelly as Luther, with bottles on his fingers, clinking them together…
“Warriors, come out to PLAAAYYY-AAAY”
It would depend on the loacation and what kind of units are in the area, really. I don’t know how the NG is foing recruitment wise right now, but evenbefore 2005 when I was recruiting (for the regular army) they weren’t doing too badly. The NG recruiters I knew had a very small mission. If they managed to get 6 people a year they were doing good. Compared to the regular army guys who had to produce 2 people a month at least.
As I said, it depends on where you are and what units. A state with a guard units that is say, a medical unit will have an easier time getting people in the guard as dental assistants, x-ray techs etc, than you will a armor battalion.
And then for some its the thrill of being able to play Rambo 2 days a month.
Three Doors Down did one of these fascist, propaganda videos as well. I think it was called “Citizen Soldier.” It sucked ass too.
I guess the NG is hoping to use these videos to recruit new bullet sponges. How much more of a sellout can a rock act become?
When I watch these things (and I’ve seen both videos a lot since I go to a lot of movies for my job), I just sit there wondering why Kid Rock doesn’t drag his ass over to Baghdad and fight if he’s such a fucking “warrior.” Three Doors Down too. Let these pricks go pick up roadside bombs for 18 months and then maybe they’ll have earned the right to participate in these recruiting commercials. Telling other kids to do it while they lay around doing blow and shagging groupies is kind of a dick move, if you ask me.
You were wrong. In spite of what you heard about the Guard during Vietnam (i.e., Bush got off by hiding in the Guard…actually, he got off because F-102s were obsolete almost as soon as they were deployed and so were not extensively used in Vietnam, although being a Bush probably didn’t hurt), the Guard and Reserve has always been deployed, emergencies or not. My own unit went to Vietnam, Grenada, Haiti, Iraq, Panama, you name it.
The idea that we sit around and play at it one weekend a month, two weeks a year is a cruel fiction. The advertisements that say that describe the absolute bare minimum. I think you’ll find that people in the Guard and Reserve do much, much more than that, and they always have. For my part I do that plus I fly once a week, help out with administrative issues all summer, deploy approximately once a year, and do PME/training in whatever spare time I have left, all in addition to raising a kid, going to school full-time and holding down another job.
God, but I wish sometimes that it were all as easy as you believe it is.
As for being unplanned, from the moment it became evident that we were going through with it and invading Iraq until we actually deployed, none of us were under the illusion that we were staying home. The only thing we needed to know was when we were leaving.
I repeat. The National Guard was a haven during Vietnam. That is a fact. Finding a few units that went doesn’t alter the fact that thousands of guys saw it as a way to stay out of the war, or that it was used to safehouse rich kids like Bush.
I don’t doubt that. Many people still think of the NG as “I’ll join that instead because I won’t get deployed”. The reality nowadays though is that you’re more likely to be deployed with the NG than in the past. A kid told me that he was going to join the NG when I was recruiter so he wouldn’t get deployed. The local NG unit was Artillery. The sure weren’t packing up to go shell Tom’s River. (though I wouldn’t have cared if they did).