Editors' Notebook
Ad Stirs Multitude of Emotions
So what did you think of the ad? The emails and texts came streaming in Sunday night and Monday morning.
First a disclaimer: I did NOT see the Ram truck commercial spot that featured Paul Harvey's speech "And on the 8th day, God Created a Farmer" during the 2013 Super Bowl. At least I didn't see the ad "live" on TV. I watched it later on the television network's website after I began hearing the buzz around "that farmer ad."
I missed the commercial's debut, but I actually saw the speech live.
Frankly, the years since that 1978 excursion to the National FFA Convention in Kansas City had fogged my memory of the details of a speech that made thousands scream and hoot and stomp feet as rural high schoolers, particularly high schoolers in the heyday of Charlie Daniels and David Allen Coe and Hank Williams Jr., were wont to do.
I had forgotten the exact words and the speaker, but not how I felt that day. The feeling often came back to me when discussing those long-ago high school FFA days with other former Blue Jackets. It was a roller-coaster sense of pride, then a touch of embarrassment, and then a drop into cynicism and sadness, as I thought about those FFA'ers around me who were screaming to a speech I thought they knew little about.
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Now I recall thinking I knew well how many late nights I'd sat by a heat lamp to save newborn pigs from the suffocating weight of their mothers, how many dirt balls I'd coughed up after a long day disking on an open tractor, how just days before that Kansas City trip I'd scrubbed and polished my farm-supply-store cowboy boots to lessen the manure smell and cover the briar-patch scars. They were the only black footwear I owned, and black was, as I'm sure it is today, a requirement of the Blue Jacket official dress code.
I mostly recall thinking that even at that time, only a portion of the screaming kids in that 1978 auditorium had real experience with the chores and struggles and the rest of the points that speech had elevated. I recall thinking that the truth was few of us, including myself, had much chance in the falling economy for staying on the farm and living the life the speaker was praising. So while I couldn't remember the speech, I do remember that as the auditorium filled with applause and "Hell yeahs!" it all rang a bit hollow. So I quickly forgot the words and for 34 years the speech itself has been a mystery.
It took but a few seconds after I double-clicked on the online version of Sunday's commercial for the darkened auditorium, that voice, and the hoots and hollers, to come suddenly bursting back into my mind's eye. "That's the speech," I almost said aloud over my Monday morning cup of coffee as my brain cells began recognizing the late Paul Harvey's unmistakable patois.
I'm usually not taken in much by video pitchmen. While I appreciate the creativity of a well-crafted ad, I know in the end, it's all about tempting me to buy something. But I give these sellers credit. This spot, especially the photography -- including images from one of my favorite photographers, William Albert Allard -- is stirring, whether you are from a farm or not. The visuals and setting are great partners to Paul Harvey's haunting delivery.
His is a voice I grew up with. I'd listened to Harvey's distinctive voice coming from the black Bakelite AM radio in my grandmother's kitchen when I was too young to tag along to the barn with "the men." So the lilting baritone, the long, run-on streams of thought suddenly punctuated by so many short, pithy nouns and verbs that the words made your eyes blink as if you were smacked by a cow's muddy tail always brought a smile to my face. It still does, even though today I know pieces of Harvey's wit were at times a little too convenient and often glossed over untidy details like that layer of boot black covering the smells and scuffs of my Tony Lama knockoffs that day in 1978.
So what did I think about "the ad" and about hearing the "Then God made a Farmer" speech this second time? Again, first proud, as were most ag-related listeners if Twitter and email traffic are any judge. Then, as before, a little embarrassed about basking in that pride. I mean, it's not like I've sat up with sows pigging in midwinter or pulled a disk under a hot sun in recent decades. But this time, instead of the teenage cynicism I ended up with in 1978, I felt the sting of concern.
"Wait 'til the anti-modern farming-crowd gets a bead on this," I caught myself thinking.
Do not get me wrong. Agriculture is an industry and a life I've lived and breathed and believed in for more than half a century. Farmers have every right to feel as proud of their accomplishments as anyone, more so than some.
But too many heart-swelling, put-ag-on-a-pedestal commentaries make me squirm a bit. Because the stumble off that pedestal hurts, and there are legions of hands ready to do the pushing. Here too, emails and texts into my in-boxes show similar concerns. And already the news and online journal reports denouncing a Norman Rockwellian view of farming are springing up.
It is a circular problem. It's the stream of anti-ag criticism that tends to make us all rally around the feel-good moments like the Ram Truck folks delivered during the most-watched group of commercials this year. We should be proud to be highlighted in that forum. We need those moments. But we should also note if we take that too far, if we rely too much on the romanticism of what agriculture was and don't meet head-on the professional, capital-intensive, high-technology industry ag is today, then pats on the back lead to more criticism for those who think we're more than a little holier-than-thou as they see us cashing ethanol-inflated grain checks and taxpayer-supported crop insurance indemnities.
So let's be proud, but mindful of all the stories we need to tell. This current discussion gives us a great opportunity to engage the public about the full story of agriculture as it is today.
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