Maybe This Is How You Sell Electric Cars to 'Real America'

If you've been watching the Olympics at all, you've probably caught the new ad for the 2014 Cadillac ELR. It's the one with the crisp, arrogant guy striding around his fabulous modernist house somewhere in Southern California. As the camera follows him through his deluxe environment, complete with attractive, industrious children, the guy (well-played by actor Neal McDonough) delivers a monologue about American exceptionalism with a snappy smugness that you'll likely find either repellent or refreshing.

The ad's ideological core is not only pro-American, it's anti-foreign, an explicit rejection of the downright European notion that life takes place not only at work, but also at home, and in the places in between.