This hardly seems fair, I can't imagine Ron Stone pulled more than $200 - $250k as a local news anchor.
Except the first ad talked about going to hell and back, about this not being the story that you've read and if you want to read into things it also showed a Diego Rivera mural that was explicitly meant to praise the working class. All of those could be read as specifically politic in terms of Obama's campaign message of the hell that the last Admin. left us in, that not to believe all the negative rhetoric that Republicans are throwing out, the Diego Rivera mural is self explanatory. I agree the first ad was about Detroit and this ad is about America in general but if you want to read politics there are just as much things in the first ad that could be read politically as the 2012 ad. I don't think either are meant to be political and certainly not remind people of the bailout. It just happens we are in an election year in a media environment saturated with politics so people are more likely to read political messages in advertizing than otherwise.
I don't know why the media continues to claim this ad is political. Eastwood doesn't even seem to like Obama. Chrysler is probably more conservative as a company considering all the battles with unions over the years. Beyond that, there just is no way they are going to try to put an ad out there associating their brand with ANYTHING controversial.
I think this is largely a made up controversy. We are in an election season where everyone is looking at things through political lenses while the Superbowl is the biggest advertizing event of the year and the media loves controversy around big events. For example the brouhaha over MIA giving the finger. Really did anyone here actually notice her giving the finger?
I just think the media manufactures this crap to justify its existence. After all, the more controversy, the better the price on those ad placements in newspapers and online. I will say this however. Republicans are fools to keep hitting this. The revival of the auto-industry - whether it is considered socialist or not, worked. The fact is it worked, and there a lot of jobs that got saved - over a million. For republicans to bash this because it is associated with Obama is going to backfire. Because it sends the message that Republicans don't care about the jobs that were saved, but rather about denying Obama any kind of victory. It looks petty and unamerican. It really is a dumb dumb strategy.