In a spooky clip from a 2014 episode of Saturday Night Live, Chris Rock sounds like he may have predicted the distasteful Dodge Ram commercial that aired Sunday night during Super Bowl LII. The commercial in question featured Martin Luther King Jr.'s sermon "Drum Major Instinct," in which he talks about needing only heart and soul to "serve," and which Dodge unsurprisingly reappropriated for their "Built To Serve" campaign.
One quick-thinking Twitter user immediately summoned the clip from the SNL episode that Rock hosted in 2014, which essentially predicted the use of something so revered as a Martin Luther King Jr. quote for commercial use. In it, Rock stated that nothing is really sacred anymore when it comes to our consumer culture, and he joked that we're "Just five years away from 9/11 sales." It's a weird state of affairs when a comedy bit comes to life in such an off-putting manner, but hey, Chris Rock warned us.
The irony of MLK's message being stripped of its context and haphazardly remixed into a commercial for cars, was not lost on the masses, as the ad received swift backlash. What's even more baffling, is that the quotes lifted came from the very same speech in which MLK Jr. condemned America's capitalist nature of promoting material things as necessities.
The excerpt from "Drum Major Instinct" that touches on capitalism reads as follows:
You can watch the Dodge commercial in question by heading here.