Canadian Politics Today

Idk I don’t think sweeping decisions about what is appropriate for kids should be made by sone of the dumbest people alive.

https://twitter.com/theamandagorman/status/1661131826432446466?s=46&t=G8DtftIJA1neVWFQ7OQYYg

Months before a Miami-area mother persuaded a local school to restrict access to an Amanda Gorman poem, she was posting antisemitic memes on her Facebook page.

Now, Daily Salinas is apologizing for one of those things — and unrepentant about the other.

“I want to apologize to the Jewish community,” Salinas told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency on Wednesday. She was saying sorry for a Facebook post she shared in March offering a summary of “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” a notorious antisemitic forgery written more than a century ago in Russia.

The post came to light this week after the Miami Herald identified Salinas as the Miami Lakes, Florida, mother who petitioned her children’s school to ban students’ access to the Gorman poem. Gorman read the poem, called “The Hill We Climb,” at President Joe Biden’s inauguration.

Salinas challenged the Gorman poem — which she says she hasn’t read in its entirety — on the grounds that it contains “indirect hate messages.” The review committee said it “erred on the side of caution” in deciding to limit students’ access.
...
Reached by JTA on Wednesday, Salinas confirmed that the post about the “Protocols” was hers and apologized for it, saying she hadn’t read it beyond the word “communism.” Salinas said her aversion to communism stems from her Cuban identity. She added that English is not her first language.

“I see the word ‘communism,’ and I think it’s something about communism,” she said. “I didn’t read the words.”
...
She said she had only read parts of the books.  “They have to read for me because I’m not an expert,” she said. “I’m not a reader. I’m not a book person. I’m a mom involved in my children’s education.”

Charlie Kirk, the founder of the right-wing group Turning Point USA, recently accused Target of "grooming" kids by offering Pride youth apparel. Yet that reportedly hasn't stop his organization from being bankrolled by a registered sex offender, new reporting reveals.

Rolling Stone reported that Shawn Bergstrand is a "benefactor" of Kirk, and that his criminal history "opens up TPUSA to charges of hypocrisy."

"Rolling Stone has learned that one of the TPUSA summit’s corporate sponsors is a Christian fashion company that is led by a registered sex offender, Shawn Bergstrand, who served time in federal prison for attempted 'coercion and enticement' after trying to persuade 'a minor female' to 'engage in sexual activity,'" it wrote.

I know, groomers hate anyone that’s against sexualizing kids.  Tough sh*t.

And they still sponsored Toronto Pride as well.

But regardless, what has happened to Bud Light is pretty much unprecedented.  I don't think anybody anticipated that this would keep going on, but it has been 3 months and every week Bud Light's market share is down about 25% from what it was a year ago; Modelo has supplanted Bud Light as the #1 beer, and Miller Light and Coors Light have gobbled up the market share that Bud Light lost.

Two bottling plants have now been closed at a loss of about 600 jobs. Anheuser-Busch has had to provide financial compensation to distributors. They've resorted to giveaways and mail-in rebates.  They've attempted new advertising campaigns (including a Harley Davidson cross-promotion and a cross-promotion with a charity for disabled veterans that included camouflage cans!) and nothing has really changed it.

Ultimately, lots of people who used to buy Bud Light are buying a different beer instead, and that might just be business as usual from now on. It might take a long time to get those buyers back. Or those buyers might not come back at all. There isn't a whole lot that distinguishes Bud Light from Miller Light or Coors Light, aside from branding and marketing and customer buying habits.  They've managed to shift an amazingly large number of consumers' habits in an amazingly short span of time. Students will be learning about this as a case study in years to come.

 -k

Everybody is boycotting everything all the time. The most unusual thing about this particular boycott is that it has actually had an impact.

It's hard to have much sympathy for a mega-corporation who lost sales because their ad bombed. I didn't shed any tears for Pepsi after their ad where Kendall Jenner ends racial strife by giving a policeman a can of pop either.  And this Bud Light disaster has the added benefit of putting an end to the career of Dylan Mulvaney as a mainstream influencer. He did a new ad for a make-up microbrand, I gather, and nothing since. Good riddance.

Mulling over why this has been such a disaster for Bud Light, I think it comes down to the idea that advertising usually tries to avoid being political.  You might say "but Dylan Mulvaney isn't political," but I think that slightly misses the mark.  Dylan himself might avoid being political, but I would bet that of American people who publicly fawn over Mulvaney, the percentage that vote Democrat is vanishingly close to 100%.

I say "publicly" because there might well be some Arkansas redneck Republican who just loves Dylan Mulvaney Tik-Tok videos, but he's not going to tell his friends about it because they wouldn't approve. Likewise there is probably some super-woke California Democrat who can't fucken stand Dylan Mulvaney, but if his friends ask him about it, he has to tell them that Dylan is "brave" and "inspiring" because he's afraid to tell them what he really thinks.   In both cases, it's people acting on what they think their "team" thinks.  I think that Dylan Mulvaney is a Rorschach test by which we can get a pretty good idea at where most people's political allegiances are based on how they answer.

So while not as overtly political as putting Joe Biden's face on their product, Bud Light did indeed unintentionally break a golden rule of advertising by associating with a spokesman that only Democrats would support and that Republicans would almost assuredly reject.

 -k

They used to ask Elvis about his political views about this or that.  He never commented and said he's just an entertainer.  He was smart.

Everything is political now, it's so annoying, everyone's on their high horse preaching. I remember when most people just STFU and lived life.

In the new Indiana Jones cash-in apparently they made Indiana out to be a divorced and depressed old loser and made his female sidekick the strong hero type.  I can remember when Disney would just STFU and make cartoons and Benji films to entertain people without ramming their identity politics down everyone's throat.