I first saw this add in the theater (before Bright Star which was awesome by the way). It made me want to go buy some Levis and to go curl up with Leaves of Grass.

I remember reading Whitman for the first time in my old apartment in the depths of the Bush years and thinking "oh, so that's what people see in America!". My parents, my TV, my school, none of them ever made me feel good about my country, certainly none of them ever made me feel inspired, but Whitman did. He showed me that even if America fails in a lot of ways, the idea of this country is fundamentally special, fundamentally good, and fundamentally beautiful. Last November, the night they counted the vote, I got out my Whitman.

So all you Slate cynics, you can say the commercial is stupid, and that kids today don't care about poetry, and that jeans are a symbol of some bygone working class ideal. But a few people saw this ad, they googled "oh pioneers" and they discovered Whitman; for some of them this ad was a wonderful gift.

"This is what you shall do : Love the earth and the sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, stand up for the stupid and the crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with poerful uneducated persons and with the you and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent ines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body . . ."