Is Gay is the new Foreign?

During the recent wanderings that have taken me away from you, dear readers, I found myself in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. It was there that I heard a radio ad for a non-American-made truck (I think the Toyota Tundra, although possibly some sort of Nissan) which seemed to be premised on the interesting idea that its target audience would find it worse to be possibly gay than to not hate foreignerners, or at least automobiles associated with foreigners.

The thrust of the ad was that those who buy Toyota Tundras are more manly than those who buy Ford F-150s, because the Tundra has more horsepower, or more cylinders, or a bigger penis, or something. The ad ended with the kicker, "Show me a man who prefers the Ford F-150 to the Toyota Tundra, and I'll show you his peach cardigan sweater."

Bold move, Toyota! I recall a time (or is it a place? It's sometimes hard to distinguish between things that have actually changed since I was a child and things that are different on the East Coast than in the Midwest) when no red-blooded truck-driver in his right mind would buy a foreign-made pickup. Toyota seems to be making a bold ploy to distract from its foreignness by gay-bashing its competitors. Keep an eye out for other ad campaigns along this theme: Wal-Mart May Be Ruining American Communities, But At Least We're Not Muslims like K-Mart! and: Yeah, Nike Uses Sweatshops, but People Who Buy New Balance Like To Kill Puppies. Ahh, advertising industry, how you keep our moral compass true!