Driving a Jeep into a ditch on Blunder Road

After nearly half a century of never having to think about how his image is impacted by a product — or vice versa — Bruce Springsteen finally succumbed to the decadeslong cajoling of a car company to endorse one of its products.

Ever suspicious of corporate desires to profit from his image in the past, Mr. Springsteen agreed to cut an ad for Jeep to run during Super Bowl LV, but on his terms.

Instead of licensing one of his songs or lip-syncing a new one composed exclusively for his corporate partners, Mr. Springsteen agreed to read a script written by the company’s ad writers they hoped would take the edge off the inevitable charge of apostasy by true believers scandalized by the very idea of The Boss shilling for a car company.

The result is a two-minute hodgepodge of American mythology featuring a voiceover by Mr. Springsteen, who is shown driving around Lebanon, Kan., the geographic center of America, trying to find his way to “a chapel that never closes.”

There’s diffused light through a window, images of wheat and big sky over snowy ground, explicitly Christian iconography, candles, dirt and a less-than-subtle appeal to the same ambient nationalism that animated Ronald Reagan’s “Morning in America” re-election bid a generation ago.

“All are more than welcome to meet here in the middle,” Mr. Springsteen’s voiceover intones with gravelly earnestness. “It’s no secret the middle has been a hard place to get to lately, between red and blue, between servant and citizen, between our freedom and our fear.”

Interspersed with images of heartland kitsch, we catch glimpses of his gleaming white Jeep, mercifully free of the road salt and wear-and-tear a less mythologized car would’ve encountered in a Springsteen song or on any American street closer to reality.

“Now fear has never been the best of who we are, and as for freedom, it’s not the property of just the fortunate few. It belongs to us all. Whoever you are, wherever you’re from, it’s what connects us, and we need that connection. We need the middle,” he says.

We know who and what he’s talking about, but we’re also vaguely annoyed that such an otherwise outspoken liberal masks his analysis behind a cloud of gauzy ambiguity. Why not clearly state what ails our national soul instead of resorting to vague insinuation? Mr. Springsteen is already dodging the honest reckoning we need to undergo before we can meet in the mythical middle.

“We just have to remember the very soil we stand on is common ground, so we can get there,” Mr. Springsteen says as he drives with the top down on what looks like a very cold day. “We can make it to the mountaintop through the desert, and we will cross this divide. Our light has always found its way through the darkness. And there’s hope on the road up ahead.”

This is not Bruce Springsteen’s best work. Those of us of a certain age were immediately compelled to reach for our vinyl copies of his 1982 album “Nebraska” — a far more honest depiction of America than his Jeep commercial by a factor of 100 — and play it nonstop just to counteract the treacly sentiments and blatant inauthenticity of what we’d just seen and heard in an ad broadcast only once on TV.

If the Jeep commercial had been filmed after the putsch by a pro-Trump mob on the Capitol on Jan. 6, Mr. Springsteen would’ve been more specific about the maladies at the heart of the American narrative because he would’ve looked ridiculous avoiding it.

The ad’s appeal to bland centrism in the service of selling cars juxtaposed with the reality of our traumatized American moment was too much to reconcile.

Regardless of their political ideology, most die-hard Springsteen fans hated the ad because it failed to say anything that could be corroborated by their lived experience. Mr. Springsteen has written dozens of songs with cars as the main or secondary characters, but none of them was as rusted through with cliches as that Jeep commercial.

Ironically, the best thing to happen to Bruce Springsteen after that misstep was Jeep pulling the ad from YouTube shortly after news leaked that its top pitchman had been arrested for allegedly driving his motorcycle while drunk in a national park less than 20 miles from his Jersey home.

For its part, Jeep said it was merely “pausing” the ad until “actual facts” about his arrest could be established.” It’s more likely that the company’s lawyers were already hard at work scrutinizing the morals clauses and fine print to see if it could clawback at least some of the mountain of money it paid its reluctant star to have anything to do with the company in the first place.

In a deal worked out with prosecutors this week, Mr. Springsteen pleaded guilty to drinking two shots of tequila at Gateway National Park in exchange for the dismissal of the reckless driving and DUI charges. It’s hard to imagine prosecutors would’ve gotten a guilty verdict out of a presumably pro-Springsteen Jersey jury anyway, so it was a good deal for everyone.

Given the swiftness with which Jeep pulled the ad from YouTube so as not to have its product tainted by association, I wouldn’t be surprised if Mr. Springsteen himself leaked the news about his arrest to save face and stop the commercial from circulating on social media. Alas, Jeep immediately resumed running the ad that has done more to ding Mr. Springsteen’s reputation than downing two shots of tequila and jumping on a motorcycle ever could.

“As we stated previously, we paused the commercial until the facts were established,” a statement from the company read. “Now that the matter has been resolved, we are unpausing the film.” Cut to Bruce Springsteen repeatedly smashing his forehead against the nearest mansion wall.

After Mr. Springsteen’s guilty plea, I imagine the Zoom meeting with the company’s lawyers went something like this: “Greetings from Jeep Corporate and congratulations on successfully resolving that, um, unpleasantness. We at Jeep continue to stand with you now that the coast is clear. We are eager to resume our vampiric exploitation of your hard-earned credibility.

“Before we proceed, we wish to ensure that there will be no more needless interruption of our mutually beneficial, but morally problematic relationship. We have a list of songs here we hope you will modify or even refrain from singing during the duration of our contract.

“Whenever you sing ‘Used Cars,’ please refrain from mentioning the brand of the car since it is a competitor. The same with ‘Cadillac Ranch’ and ‘Pink Cadillac.’ Those are boring songs, anyway.

“We’re asking you to stop singing ‘Stolen Car’ altogether because some people may mistakenly believe you’re advocating felonious behavior. Jeep can’t afford to be associated with that even if it wasn’t your intention.

“We know you have a soft spot for performing ‘Racing in the Street,’ but it has come to our attention that none of the characters in that song are wearing seat belts. That’s just wrong. Fix it.

“As for ‘Thunder Road,’ a song that rivals ‘Born to Run’ as your greatest creation, we have real problems with the fact that none of those wild and restless characters is driving a Jeep. Why not? Please correct this inadvertent erasure of our product at your earliest convenience, Mr. Springsteen. After all, we plan on running this ad until you drop dead and we’ve sucked all the marrow out of your workingclass image and milked your soul for every positive association it is worth.”

And just like that, “The Boss” has been commercially rehabilitated! Rock on, America! Buy a Jeep!