The fans have gone home, the refs have put their whistles in their pockets, and Danica Patrick has finished getting dressed, but the Super Bowl XLIV postgame carries on. The most talked-about commercial during the game was a Chrysler spot with surprise narrator Clint Eastwood. It was about how industry in Detroit has begun recovering, and it had the tagline "Halftime in America," suggesting the best is yet to come after these commercial messages. Now "the left and right are having their fun goofing on it" reports THR. Rush Limbaugh's writing staff decided "halftime" sounded too much like a suggestion that Obama needs a second term, so they got a Clint voice-impersonator to do a parody that said "It's halftime in America ... People are out of work and they're hurting. And they're all wondering what Obama's gonna do to them next." Another parody from the Second City Network "appears to be a subtle attack on GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney." (The original and parodies are gathered here). According to Politico, Limbaugh claimed Eastwood "got scammed" into doing the ad.

"Limbaugh ... said "all of this talk of 'working together'" is something people say when Democrats are "about to get shellacked." Hmm, surely not every ad has a secret subliminal message. According to Fox News, Eastwood told an "O'Reilly Factor" producer: "I just want to say that the spin stops with you guys, and there is no spin in that ad. l am certainly not politically affiliated with Mr. Obama. It was meant to be a message about just about job growth and the spirit of America." Devious! But wait - THR reports that some of the creative people at the agency that made the ad also did some work for Obama. Meanwhile Michael Shaw at HuffPo says the spot is clearly anti-union, because it showed an image of union protests while Clint spoke negatively of "the fog, division, discord, and blame made it hard to see what lies ahead." Shaw writes: "Visual deconstruction of the ad shows just how threatening protest is to corporate America." Crazy world where a Clint Eastwood commercial causes a bigger stir than Eminem's Chrysler ad last year.
Lots of postgame analysis of the other commercials, too. Says The Technium: "They are definitely getting weirder, more whimsical, trying harder to catch your attention - while you check your email. They are no longer competing against the possibility of you leaving for the bathroom; they are competing with you re-watching the previous commercial on your Tivo or your iPad." The Verge appreciates the cavalcade of tech innovators highlighted in Best Buy's commercial: "While we're just as crazy about football as the next site, it's nice to see the nerds getting some shine amid all the beer swilling and chest bumping." MediaFile has assembled ALL of the Super Bowl commercials in one blog post! Which would be here. Fast Company in a very sophisticated manner compares the Facebook IPO announcement to the Syuper Bowl and compares the two media as marketing platforms. "The Super Bowl is advertising as the largest common denominator; the commercials created for it strive to be all things to all people. Facebook - and Google as well - are algorithmic engines that deliver the highest personal denominator." Right - we'll get back to you on that.
Apparently this was indeed a Super Social Bowl, or a Social Super Bowl, or something like that. "You could have watched the Super Bowl without checking Twitter or Facebook, but you probably snuck at least a few peeks in throughout the game," accuses Peter Kafka at All Things D. "And a lot of you ended up typing something, too. Bluefin Labs, "a social TV start-up that analyzes commentary during TV broadcasts, says it saw 11.5 million comments during tonight's game. That's up more than 6x over last year's broadcast." Wow, you don't say? The big football fans at The Next Web say the Super Bowl became America's most Tweeted sporting event! (for some reason they use a photo of a San Diego Chargers receiver.) "Twitter says that the final few minutes saw an average of 10,000 TPS (that's tweets per second, Office Space fans), which was enough to break the record in itself, but the wave of tweets peaked at the 12,233 TPS mark." Someone notify the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio. That clearly surpasses the career Tweet record of Super Bowl great Joe Montana, whose games tallied zero tweets. Mashable alerted us in advance that the NFL was setting up a Social Media Command Center in Indianapolis (because there was a big football game nearby). After the game it turned out that the Command Center, like the Giants' defensive line, was an "enormous success." For example, on Saturday afternoon, a fan named Morgan Cooper tweeted to no one in particular that she was struggling to find somewhere to park. Less than half an hour later, someone at the command center located Cooper's post and responded with a link to a map of more than 50 parking areas."
Halftime in Indiana musical performer Madonna also inspired Tweetage, says Lost Remote. "The 53-year-old Madonna (yes, her age was actually part of a trending topic) dazzled on stage. Most of the tweets were positive, but not by much: Networked Insights found 28% positive, 21% negative." Welcome to the NFL! "If Madonna would have Tebow'ed at the end of Like a Prayer, Twitter would have crashed," tweeted @had2sayit.