David French sold out his conservativism to be a dupe for the New York Times. This time out, he dipped into the PR disaster created by the CEO of Cracker Barrel. He blamed right-wing media for customers abandoning the chain of restaurants.
It’s the food, dude.
If you follow right-wing media at all, you know that two of the biggest stories of the past month involve completely frivolous and meaningless cultural disputes. First, at the end of July, a few voices online criticized an ad campaign by American Eagle that featured Sydney Sweeney, an actress and model.
And second, Cracker Barrel had the audacity to change its logo, replacing the older version that featured a man (Uncle Herschel, in Cracker Barrel lore) leaning against a barrel with a new logo that simply featured the words Cracker Barrel in a plain font.
Neither of these incidents has the slightest material impact on any person’s life (except perhaps Sweeney’s), yet stories about an ad and a logo in some cases dwarfed the right-wing coverage given to various Trump scandals. And that just might be the point: to distract.
Hershel was a salesman for Martha White Flour for 32 years throughout the South. His nephew founded Cracker Barrel and hired him to promote the restaurants. He had plenty of stories he learned from his years on the road to share.
In recent years, the quality of the food fell. Removing Uncle Heschel from the logo—as well as turning the general store feel of the dining room—was the last straw.
The uproar was not a creation of Fox News but an eyeroll by former patrons to the chain’s tone-deaf marketing plan. Fix the food, not the logo.
Food matters. My wife’s illness has me buying a lot of takeout. I like ordering online. One chain restaurant had excellent service and decent prices. We won’t be back because the food was terrible.
As for the Sydney Sweeney controversy being a faux outrage by the right, does David French read his own paper?
John McWhorter wrote in NYT on July 29, “Do These Jeans Make My Ad Look Racist?
One social media post called it “genuinely scary.” Another opined: “The American Eagles ad wasn’t just a commercial. It was a love letter to white nationalism and eugenic fantasies, and Sydney Sweeney knew it.”
“Praising Sydney Sweeney for her great genes in the context of her white, blonde hair blue eye appearance,” a commentator said on TikTok. “It is one of the loudest and most obvious racialized dog whistles we’ve seen and heard in a while. When those traits are consistently uplifted as genetic excellence, we know where this leads. This just echoes pseudoscientific language of racial superiority.”
As for good (or great) genes, Robin Landa, an expert on advertising and branding, told Newsweek that the expression “was once central to American eugenics ideology, which promoted white genetic superiority and enabled the forced sterilization of marginalized groups.”
You can tell who the marginalized people are by reading a calendar because if they get a month all to themselves (Gay Pride) then they are marginalized.
Professor McWhorter reached the conclusion that no, the ad was not racist. That’s good to know.
Three days later, Yola Mzizi opined in NYT:
She’s smiling while holding up a face cream in an ad on the subway and pops up when customers are placing orders at Baskin Robbins. She’s taking awkward selfies with the latest Samsung flip phone or trying to convince you that pink fuzzy loafers are cool. She sells her bath water, and most recently, she’s in an advertisement that’s been making news for touting her great genes and jeans on a billboard in Times Square.
The latter arrived a week ago in the form of an American Eagle campaign for jeans that makes a pun on the notion that Ms. Sweeney won the genetic lottery. The ad, which quickly took off online, set off controversy when some social media users felt it veered uncomfortably close to promotion of eugenics and the glorification of whiteness. It has also been decried for its sexually suggestive nature and for catering to the “male gaze.” It’s unclear how much input, if any, Ms. Sweeney had on the end result.
Uncomfortably close to promotion of eugenics?
Male gaze?
Socialist scolds spend too much time inventing problems and too little time on fixing the real problems they created such as cities ruined by sex and drugs and shoplifting.
Having attacked Sweeney only to see people rally behind her, NYT is washing its hands of its own silliness over an ad for blue jeans.
(No one seems to pay attention to the 1966 Mustang GT she drove off in a cloud of exhaust. I want that Mustang even though it isn’t a ragtop.)
The corporate world changed thanks to Dylan Mulvaney, a Broadway actor who caught the tranny fad and promoted himself as a boy transitioning to being a girl. He made a million dollars from endorsements in one year alone.
He was Sydney Sweeney before she was.
Then came Bud Light. Oops.
There was no organized boycott, which made Bud Light’s drop hit CEOs everywhere harder. The spontaneous reaction to just stop drinking the beer sent a message to corporate America to stop catering to the few because you will lose the many.
Mulvaney makes a horrible girl. Hint to trannies: shave your face as well as your legs. The days of DEI ads and the worship of LGBT ended not with a bang but with an eyeroll. Corporations abandoned Gay Pride.
Now the Guardian is upset because “Publications aimed at LGBTQ+ audiences face discrimination from advertisers, editors warn.”
Tag Warner, the chief executive of Gay Times, said his publication, which had been growing digitally in the US, had lost 80% of its advertisers in the past year. It has also lost in excess of £5 million in expected advertiser revenue.
Warner, who has led the outlet since 2019, said his title’s growth had been accompanied by an enthusiasm from brands to embrace LGBTQ+ audiences. He blames an anti-DEI drive in the US for the dramatic shift.
The gay mafia has learned the hard truth about ultimatums to obey Or Else. Sometimes people choose Or Else.
Warner said the anti-DEI impact pre-dated the return of Donald Trump to the White House. Figures such as the conservative pundit Robby Starbuck have been engaged in a long-running anti-DEI campaign, pressuring firms to drop their diversity efforts. However, Warner said Trump’s arrival “gave everyone, I think, permission to be honest about it.”
Republicans have always been anti-DEI. That’s why they passed the 14th Amendment after the Civil War but before all the Confederate states re-entered the union. It bans racial discrimination.
LGBT went overboard with its Drag Queen Story Hours, its pronouns and its support of butchering children in the name of gender-affirming care.
David French doesn’t like it. Too bad. He should lay the blame where it belongs: on the excesses of liberals.
And Dylan Mulvaney.
For a while, I thought that caucasians weren’t allowed in commercials.
All dogs (I imagine) can smell. Only dogs properly trained can sniff out cocaine. Only racialized dogs (trained in critical race theory) can hear racial dog whistles.