NYT: Audi's Green Police Ad 'Put the Mental in Environmental'

One of the reasons many people watch the Super Bowl is for the ads, and one that surely will be talked about at watercoolers Monday is Audi's Green Police commercial.

In it, ordinary citizens are arrested for using plastic instead of paper, throwing away batteries, not recycling orange rinds, possessing incandescent light bulbs, and setting their hot tub thermostats too high all while Robin Zander sings refashioned lyrics to Cheap Trick's '70s classic "The Dream Police."

To give you an idea just how scary this futurist vision of environmentalism running amok was, even the New York Times found it "misguided" (video embedded below the fold, h/t Seton Motley):

AUDI Officious "green police" punish citizens who are not sufficiently eco-conscious, but an owner of an Audi A3 TDI with clean-diesel technology drives away scot-free. This misguided spot put the "mental" in "environmental." 

Imagine that. I guess environmentalism can even go too far for the good folks at the Gray Lady.

Who'd have thought it?