Disputed Cadillac ad reminds me why I love this country

Taken from Thursday’s edition of The Jason Rantz Show.

Some people are saying a new ad from Cadillac has portrayed the American Dream as the American nightmare.

Carolyn Gregoire writes on The Huffington Post:

“There are plenty of things to celebrate about being American, but being possessed by a blind mania for working yourself into the ground, buying more stuff and mocking people in other countries just isn’t one of them.”

That was her take on the new ad for a 2014 Cadillac ELR.

I was kind of inspired it. I thought it was a cool commercial that really hit into the American Dream which is very simple: work hard and get rewarded.

Nowhere in that ad does this guy say he works himself into the ground. All he said was he doesn’t taken an entire month off, which is a uniquely Gen Y requirement of the workforce. I know friends who are my age saying oh I just want to take a couple months off and go travel. OK, you do that. But there are consequences to that.

The American Dream is working hard and getting rewarded. There’s nothing wrong with that. We have to stop putting out this notion that you shouldn’t work for what you earn, that you should just somehow get it. That is a lot of the reason I push back just fundamentally against this $15 minimum wage idea, where just because you want something, you deserve it.

That’s not how life works. That’s not how jobs work. I want $1 million. I don’t get it unless I earn it, unless I work extra, extra hard, unless people start listening in unheard of amounts of numbers to my show. That is when I will start making more and more and more money.

But it takes hard work. It takes determination. It takes some sacrifice. It means sometimes working those hours you don’t want to work. It sometimes means missing a party, missing a dinner, missing a date, missing a birthday.

But I think what is uniquely American, especially about that commercial that really pushes home is, we are a different country because we do in fact work hard. This country was born, was created on people who work really, really hard, and they get rewarded, which is a uniquely American thing to do. You don’t often see people who legitimately work their butts off and then don’t see a reward at the end of the day. That is rare. And that’s why I love this country – because you get what you put in.

Taken from Thursday’s edition of The Jason Rantz Show.

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