The latest thing in product placement

14 thoughts on “The latest thing in product placement”

    1. I really wonder what’s going on here. Surely the cartoonist needed permission to do this. But was permission granted because State Farm wanted the reference, or because the bosses there are Dems, or both? I can’t imagine something this obvious would be done without permission.

      But I like the cartoon, regardless.

      1. It’s possible State Farm doesn’t know about it yet and/or didn’t give permission. I doubt the cartoonist contacted them. I looked at the State Farm Ad and didn’t see a copyright statement so it might not be protected by law. Also derivative works, and satire are legal forms of expression that don’t violate copyright laws. It’s how Saturday Night Live gets away with it.

        Likely the legal department at State Farm is giggling and pretending not to notice.

        1. Well, that was my first thought, that State Farm has or had no clue about this. Such a brazen ripoff of the commercial! I agree that prior permission seems unlikely. And that State Farm would likely appreciate the exposure … depending on their politics. I just find the whole thing very interesting.

        2. And State Farm is an unwinnable situation. Object and they’re cheeto supporters and upset half their customers or they approve and upset the other half. Best corporate stance: “What, someone parodied our commercial?”

    1. Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Shumer, powerful Democrats in Congress, are surprising Trump with a budget deal which contains even less money for a wall than the original bill he was offered. Definitely not what he’d hoped for.

      The scene is copied directly from a State Farm commercial (click the photo to see it) where the kid who was dying to get a car was given the family’s old hand-me-down rather than the nicer car he’d have preferred.

  1. Trump clearly wants to be a king, unencumbered by the other two branches of government, and his one-time impulse to build a magnificent, “beautiful” wall has become an obsession. Thinking about this last night made me recall a famous poem by Shelly. (What will the Wall look like a hundred years from now?)

    Ozymandias

    I met a traveller from an antique land
    Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
    Stand in the desert . . . Near them, on the sand,
    Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
    And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
    Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
    Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
    The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:
    And on the pedestal these words appear:
    ‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
    Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’
    Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
    Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
    The lone and level sands stretch far away.

    1. So appropriate! I read someplace that Trump not only wants to build his “mighty wall” but he hopes or dreams that it will come to be known as the Trump Wall. All his other edifices bear his name, so he’s thinking the wall should too. And I really think originally he envisioned something like the Great Wall of China. The man is so delusional that I wonder how he’s managed to function in society this long.

... and that's my two cents