Obligatory Superbowl ad comment

The analysis of the Superbowl commercials in inevitably more fun that the commercials themselves. (I've only watched one actual game in my entire life so I can't speak about that aspect.)

Someone needs to tell Dayo Olopade , that this sort of smug argument not only fails to convince anyone, it tends to make people instinctively pull the other way. That said, I think Olopade hits something very profound when she focuses not just on the Green Police ad but the entire collection of ads and particularly she concludes:

But if Mad Men has left any practical lesson, it's that the glamourous cadre of Madison Avenue hacks are also pop psychologists plugged into the elusive id of America, knowing what we want and how we want it before we do.

She might add that these Madison Avenue "hacks" have done a much better job at predicting where the culture is going than intellectuals have managed. In which case, the Superbowl ads ought to be causing panic in some sectors. Olopade herself affects a casual superiority that this signals something about the decline of men, but I'd be more inclined to wonder if this doesn't tell us about a coming resurgence.