State Farm. . . Animal Farm

I love this song and was slightly annoyed to find it in what I thought was a Jesus commercial (Jesus is like if the head cheerleader was also really smart and cool. Rad on his own but lose the rabid following. If Jesus is so great, why does he need marketing? This is why I respect the Jews) I thought it was a Jesus commercial because it said "We all need someone to believe in. To rely on. To trust." Also first few images are of downtrodden black folks just like a lot of the Jesus ads in St. Louis which always seems a little suspect to me. The image at 0:08 damaged NO style "shotgun shack," palm trees, crying black lady is very clearly meant to evoke Katrina victims.

When it was for State Farm I was like, well, they evoked Jesus for the sake of capitalism, it's not the first time or the last time. End of my disgruntlement. But then I remembered that State Farm had tried to change thousands of Katrina claims from water damage, which they cover, to wind damage, which they do not cover. Even Trent Lott tried to sue them. You know your on the wrong side of Jesus when everyone is on your case INCLUDING Trent Lott.

http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2006/08/state_farm_insi.html

Love Thy Neighbor? This is the same perversion of religion that we accuse terrorists of. At least terrorists are honest about their aims.

I always wonder about evocations of Hurricane Katrina v. 9/11. The image of a family next to their home is not as direct as say, the image of the wall of still missing WTC workers, but I do think that State Farm or any other company would be more hesitant in using equally direct 9/11 imagery compared to Katrina imagery.

The death tolls were ~2500 for Katrina and ~2700 for 9/11 so roughly the same. In terms of physical loss, we get caught up in the actual WTC buildings as a symbol for capitalism, not realizing that the "Lost City of New Orleans" as Lil Wayne put it, was even before its wreck, a symbol for the other side of capitalism. As a country we would rather have not seen most of NO in the first place (or St. Louis or Detroit for that matter), so its "disappearance" did not make it any more invisible than it already was.

With other statistics equal, the only conclusion to draw is that these two equally tragic events were in the Real World, not equal.