Of all the commercials I saw during Sunday’s Super Bowl, the creepiest by far was Audi’s “Green Police” ad which was supposed to laugh at the poor, beknighted fools being hauled away to goodness knows where by a new environmental police force while the cool Audi drivers got to speed away from the Stasi…I’m sorry, Green Police’s, disapproval.

Michelle Malkin has done most of the heavy lifting as to why the commercial’s real message of “fascism is fun!” isn’t quite so funny when you consider that the enviro-cops have already set up shop, albeit sans catchy Cheap Trick knock-off soundtrack. I won’t cover the ground she’s already covered very well, but I will highlight one big fat lie on Audi’s “Green Police” web site.

Here, according to Audi, is why their commercial is really just an innocent bag of yuks.

Now consumers have help, from the Green Police.

As part of the lead up to their third consecutive Super Bowl ad, Audi has created a fictional Green Police unit that are caricatures of today’s “green movement”. The Green Police are a humorous group of individuals that have joined forces in an effort to collectively help guide consumers to make the right decision when it comes to the environment. They’re not here to judge, merely to guide these decisions.

So they’re “not here to judge” and only want to “guide” us, eh? Well, let’s just take a look at that commercial for a quick second uick and see what this not-judging and laughalicious guiding really looks like.

Wow, it didn’t take long for our non-judgmental Green Police guide to slam a guy’s head onto a checkout counter and frog-march…err, “guide”…him out of a grocery store, did it? Then there was the “humorous” warrantless search of every garbage can in the neighborhood leading to a bum rush of a private residence where the “caricatures” will no doubt “help” the resident right into a court date. And how about that guy carefully “guided” into a police car after being “arrested”? I bet he didn’t feel judged at all, especially by the big spotlight from the helicopter and the news vans parked in front of his house. And how about the guy dragged out of the pool who is almost cuffed before he takes off, with the Green Guides in hot pursuit? It sure seemed he had all kinds of Green Shirt…oops “Police”…help, didn’t he?

I’ve seen guiding and, friends, that’s not it. It takes a certain amount of gumption (I use that word because the more accurate word is NSFW) to say that a uniformed force dragging people out of grocery stores and hot tubs is “humorous” and “not here to judge”. Audi is, to use a polite phrase, full of beans and its commercial is only a solid minute of innocent fun if you had never read a history book, or George Orwell, for that matter. But if you’re one of the people who’ll end up doing Green Time for your sins if the environmental movement gets its way, it’s probably not all that funny.

Iranian laws about the Web are purposely kept vague. Ahmed Batebi, the dissident who recently escaped Tehran after eight years in prison, told me that “The regime can arrest people and bloggers for any reason precisely because the laws are not clear.”

A journalist in the city of Yazd recently reported several cases of bloggers being shut down or involved in lawsuits due to readers’ comments. And on Nov. 14, local Iranian press reported that a new police unit was formed to fight “insults and the spreading of lies” on the Internet—another phrase which effectively bans any criticism of the regime.

It’s hard to believe in light of this Internet repression, but Iran’s president is himself a blogger. “Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s Personal Memos” is the place where he goes to vent and stay in touch with the common folk. He says he allots himself 15 minutes a week to write on his blog, but admits that at times he exceeds this limit.

via David Keyes: Ahmadinejad, the Blogger – WSJ.com.