Alex Guarneschelli Loved This Super Bowl Commercial

A Super Bowl commercial that was supposed to be about unity, ended up being one of the most polarizing ads of the game. Bruce Springsteen starred in a two-minute Jeep commercial that didn't really try to sell Jeeps. The one "The Boss" drives is a 1980 model and would be hard to find even on a used-car lot. Instead, Springsteen was trying to sell the idea that this deeply divided nation — fresh off a hotly contested presidential election and a direct assault on the U.S. Congress — can find common ground. Maybe if we all hopped in our Jeeps in the wintertime, with the top down, and head to the little chapel in Kansas that stands at the geographic center of the country, then America could reunite.

People on the political right hated the commercial. So did people on the left — finally, something everyone can agree on! Still others weren't thinking so much about politics and declared their love for the Jeep commercial. Count celebrity chef, Alex Guarnaschelli, among those who gave the ad a big thumbs-up. However, this had more to do with her feelings for Springsteen than anything else.

Guarnaschelli, a Food Network regular as the host of Supermarket Stakeout and recurring judge on Chopped, wasn't thinking politics when she tweeted about Springsteen's Super Bowl Jeep ad. Her interest was in the voice that launched millions of record sales. Guarnaschelli tweeted, "I would listen to Bruce Springsteen read the instructions in a pack of toilet paper." In other words, it doesn't matter if Springsteen is talking about national unity or Jeeps, or reciting the phone book — Guarnaschelli is all ears. Suddenly, it's easy to picture the celebrity chef as a giddy teenager at one of Bruce's concerts in the 1980s.

Many of Guarnaschelli's Twitter followers agreed wholeheartedly. "His voice ... nothing like it," one of her fans tweeted. Another one of the famous cook's Twitter followers thought Springsteen's voice was able to bring home Jeep's message of unity — contrary to a lot of politically motivated critics out there. They tweeted, "That was so beautiful; best commercial ever. Not all about the company but about our America."

Ironically, or maybe totally unsurprisingly, not many people on the political right or left were buying what the Jeep Super Bowl commercial was selling. Fox News was quick to point out that Springsteen recently called Trump's four years in office "a f***ing nightmare" that required an exorcism on Election Day. Fox also reminded its online audience that Springsteen, who made a pilgrimage to the literal center of America for a Jeep commercial, declared a willingness to flee to Australia if Trump won a second term. YouTube commenter Steve Smith expressed conservative skepticism underneath the Jeep video, writing, "Headline: Bruce Springsteen gets paid mint to pretend to like Republicans."

Liberals were equally skeptical of Springsteen's Super Bowl Jeep commercial. The pop music critic at The Washington Post insisted that the nation's right wing needs to pay a price for the attack on the Capitol before we do any reuniting. For good measure, the critic added that Springsteen shilling a product that contributes to the world's climate crisis is not a good look for a boomer pop star who won't be around long enough to see the crisis become a catastrophe. Ouch.