While watching some mid-afternoon Olympics coverage (Canada/Latvia hockey game on MSNBC, I think), I saw an amusing Walmart commercial. Apparently the ad has been running for a few days already, but today was the first time I’d seen it. The basic outline of the commercial is factory shots, blue collar workers getting ready to work, all followed by a promise by Walmart to invest $250 billion in American products over the next 10 years.
It was definitely one of those feel-good, “GO AMERICA!!!” ads that Chevy and Budweiser have gotten so good at over the years, with one problem.
The soundtrack to this tribute to American labor? Rush’s Working Man. Rush is Canadian. Canada is not America.
Perhaps a great way to kick off their newfound commitment to the American worker would have been for Walmart to license a song from an American artist. Something like Blue Collar Man (Long Nights) by Styx, Factory by Bruce Springfield, or Aaron Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man. Look, I like Working Man and I love Rush, but I couldn’t resist the opportunity to point out the irony.
Things then took an unexpected turn…
Anybody else find it funny that a Walmart commercial pledging to support American factories uses a song by Canada’s Rush?
— Joe Guarr (@jguarr) February 19, 2014
@jguarr Yes, we know Rush is Canadian. We just think it’s an awesome song. ~Lilla
— Walmart (@Walmart) February 20, 2014
@jguarr What do you think of our commitment to buy more American-made products? ~Lilla
— Walmart (@Walmart) February 20, 2014
@Walmart I’d be more excited if Walmart stayed out of ed reform, embraced union labor, and treated employees better http://t.co/glhWvP7bSB
— Joe Guarr (@jguarr) February 20, 2014
Hey, worth a shot, right?
The Trombonist’s Mouthpiece by Joe Guarr is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License
The Trombonist's Mouthpiece 
Great post, wish I could think of snappy comebacks like that 🙂