October 10, 2006

Haul This

Last night Jeremy mentioned an article from Slate about GM’s use of images of Rosa Parks and other historic persons and events to sell Chevy trucks. Here’s another article from the New York Times. Commentary on the ad—which also features images of Joe Louis, Martin Luther King Jr., Richard Nixon, the Vietnam War, the World Trade Center site, and New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina—is roundly negative. The ad may well be in bad taste, but I was interested to read that the Parks Institute (an organization established by Rosa Parks herself) is in on the act, reminding us again that the politics of memory is a complicated business.

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