Tag Archives: Audi

Reinforcing A False Narrative

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I love football, so I watched the Super Bowl. My team wasn’t playing, so I cheered for the Patriots (I spent 35 years living near their stadium). I loved the halftime show. However, there was one deeply disturbing and misleading commercial. Evidently I was not the only person who thought so.

Dennis Prager posted an article at the National Review today about that ad. The ad was for Audi, a really cool car. Unfortunately, the ad was destructive and convinced me that I will never buy an Audi.

The article quotes the text of the ad:

“What do I tell my daughter?

“Do I tell her that her grandpa is worth more than her grandma?

“That her dad is worth more than her mom?

“Do I tell her that despite her education, her drive, her skills, her intelligence, she will automatically be valued as less than every man she ever meets?

“Or maybe . . . I’ll be able to tell her something different.”

First of all, if you tell her any of those things, you are lying to her. You are also telling her that she is a victim because she is a woman. You are not telling her that ‘the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world.’ You are not telling her what a privilege she has to be able to bear children and nurture a husband and family. You are not telling her that she CAN achieve anything a man can achieve in the business world if she has the proper qualifications. Are you telling her to get a degree in feminine studies and then compete against a man with a masters degree in business administration? Are you telling her that her worth as a person is only based on how much money she makes? Are you instilling in her the idea that she is supposed to be a ‘human doing’ instead of a human being? Exactly what is the message you want to give your daughter?

Dennis Prager puts this much better than I do:

First, we need to stop the politicization of everything in America. We need to be able to watch sports, for example, without left-wing propaganda intruding. I would feel the same about right-wing propaganda, but the Right believes in allowing people to enjoy life without injecting politics wherever possible.

Second, the ad sent the false and debilitating message to every girl that being born in America is to be born oppressed and persecuted: “I am a woman, therefore I am a victim.”

In the words of the ad, “she will automatically be valued as less than every man she ever meets.” It is hard to imagine a worse message to give a child. I devote an entire chapter in my book on happiness (Happiness Is a Serious Problem) to victimhood, because regarding oneself as a victim makes happiness impossible. Which is a big reason many feminists are unhappy human beings.

…Fifth, even from just a materialistic perspective, the ad is based on a lie. Women do not make less than men for the same work. And wage differences based on gender have been illegal for over 50 years. This fraudulent claim has been debunked so often — for a powerful five-minute video on the subject, see “The Myth of the Gender Wage Gap” (2.3 million views), presented by Christina Hoff Sommers at PragerU.com — that it is utterly irresponsible to keep repeating it. Using common sense alone, why would any employers hire a man if they can hire a woman to do the exact same work for 25 percent less?

Audi makes a wonderful car. Do they pay women who work for them less than they pay men? What is their claim based on? Do the women who work for Audi consider themselves victims? The car in the ad is beautiful. The ad is totally misleading.

The Downside Of Convenience

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A friend of ours has a car with a keyless ignition. That means that when he goes somewhere, he does not have to put the key in the ignition of the car to start the car–the key can simply be in his pocket. I will admit that I don’t actually understand the purpose of this technology–if you have to have the key with you, why does it matter whether or not you have to put the key in the ignition? At any rate, if you own a Volkswagen, Fiat, Audi, Ferrari, Porsche or Maserati, your car might have a keyless entry. So what’s the problem?

Bloomberg News posted a story yesterday which stated:

“Keyless” car theft, which sees hackers target vulnerabilities in electronic locks and immobilizers, now accounts for 42 percent of stolen vehicles in London. BMWs and Range Rovers are particularly at-risk, police say, and can be in the hands of a technically minded criminal within 60 seconds.

Security researchers have now discovered a similar vulnerability in keyless vehicles made by several carmakers. The weakness – which affects the Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID) transponder chip used in immobilizers – was discovered in 2012, but carmakers sued the researchers to prevent them from publishing their findings.

The article goes on to explain that the transponders that allow the vehicles to sense when the RFID chip is in the car can be hacked. Since the chips are used in some very high-end cars–Audi, Porsche, Bentley and Lamborghini, as well as Fiats, Hondas, Volvos and some Maserati models, there is an increased risk of theft to begin with. The signal from the RFID chip to the car can be amplified and copied by a hacker. Then, when the car is left unattended, the signal can be duplicated, and the car can be easily stolen.

I am not opposed the progress, but if a car is more vulnerable to theft because of the RFID system, it might be a good idea to go back to the old system of putting the key into the ignition until you get the bugs out of the RFID system. However, the Bloomberg article points out that Volkswagen has spent the past two years trying to hide the security problem with the RFID chip, so the average car buyer has no idea he has an increased risk of having his car stolen because it uses an RFID chip instead of a good old-fashioned ignition key. That is a problem. If I spend the kind of money it takes to buy a Maserati, I don’t want an increased possibility of having my car stolen as part of the package.