Jaguar’s new ad campaign and the wacky right-wing reaction

Let’s look at a viral event

The Jaguar car brand lingers in memory as an upscale British car with an aristocratic edge. A new effort to re-brand it has become a right-wing hatefest.

A 30-second commercial with surreal imagery of stylishly costumed people in a pink desert seemed to many viewers as some kind of weird queer wonderland—and a big mistake.

Jaguar 2024 “Copy Nothing” campaign

The right-wing viewers seem to completely misunderstand every important point.

Far from being a “conservative” standard, Jaguar hasn’t made money in decades. The Jaguar cars that linger in memory are from the 1950s and 1960s. They were Bentleys for middle-class people.

They were notoriously unreliable.

A range of efforts were made to save the company.

In 1989, Ford bought Jaguar—along with Aston Martin, Volvo, and Land Rover—trying to expand the company’s “premiere” offerings. It…