Woke Capitalism
June 23, 2023 — John Hinderaker
This Star Tribune headline caught my attention: “Keith Ellison, other state attorneys general concerned with Target pulling Pride products.” Why on earth would Target’s response to customer complaints be a matter of concern to attorneys general? What possible crime could they be looking into? Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison and a group of 14 other attorneys general penned a letter to Target CEO Brian Cornell this week expressing concern about
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June 6, 2023 — John Hinderaker
Today’s Wall Street Journal surveys the wreckage of recent weeks and headlines: “Companies’ New Cause: Dodging the Culture Wars.” It is all quite interesting, but I want to highlight a couple of points: CEOs spent the past few years adjusting to a world in which investors, customers and employees expected corporate leaders to align themselves with social causes. Did they really? I think that only a small minority of investors,
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June 5, 2023 — John Hinderaker
Target keeps digging the hole deeper. Fox News has a report on the Target Foundation, which funds the extreme Left. One of the beneficiaries of Target’s largesse is the NDN Collective, a South Dakota nonprofit that hauls in $50 million or more in annual revenue. It must be nice to be on the Left! That is where the money is. NDN is absurdly radical: NDN identifies as “intersectional,” which is
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May 31, 2023 — John Hinderaker
Target’s sales have dropped sharply following its bizarre “Pride” promotion of men’s women’s swimsuits, children’s grooming books, and the like. How Target went down the woke path will be studied by future generations of MBA students as a lesson in what to avoid. It remains to be seen whether Target’s sales decline will be long-lasting, but for now the situation is only getting worse. Yesterday, this performance of “Boycott Target”
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May 26, 2023 — John Hinderaker
The Left is attacking us with its most bizarre culture war yet, the “trans” fad that threatens the mental and physical health of our children and young people. So we have no choice but to fight back. To start with, let’s fight back against Target. Target’s sins go far beyond its “Pride” collection. Most attention has focused on the clothing line that included expanded-crotch “women’s” swimsuits and partnership with a
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May 24, 2023 — John Hinderaker
Of all the strange phenomena of our strange era, the most inexplicable to me is woke capitalism. We see it all around us: Major League Baseball moving the All-star Game out of Atlanta (does anyone remember why?), Delta Airlines aligning itself with the Democratic Party, the Bud Light fiasco. Along with Budweiser, a number of other companies have driven off the “pride” cliff. This is only a partial list, but
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April 22, 2023 — Elizabeth Stauffer
Ad Age reports there’s been a shakeup among leadership in the marketing department at Bud Light. Anheuser-Busch, the brand’s parent company, has confirmed that Alissa Heinerscheid, the woman behind the disastrous decision to partner with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney in their latest marketing campaign, has taken a leave of absence and “will be replaced by Todd Allen, who was most recently global marketing VP for Budweiser.” In a statement first
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April 10, 2023 — Scott Johnson
Steve posted the heavy thoughts of Bud Light VP of Marketing Alissa Heinerscheid here yesterday. I love the condescending sing-song she brings to her “explanation” of the current Bud Light marketing campaign. “We need to evolve and elevate this incredibly iconic brand….What does evolve and elevate mean?” Heavy thought: “It means inclusivity. It means shifting the tone. It means having a campaign that’s truly inclusive and feels lighter and brighter
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April 9, 2023 — Steven Hayward
This is said to be the marketing manager for Bud Light who thinks the answer to declining sales is “diversity.” Somehow this genius strategy hasn’t stopped declining enrollments in colleges and universities. Alissa Heinerscheid, Bud Light’s VP of Marketing, doubles down on her extreme woke strategy to promote the “declining” American beer brand to “young people”, while smearing her former customers as “fratty and out of touch”. How’s that working
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April 6, 2023 — John Hinderaker
The wokeness of American big business is one of the most curious phenomena of our times. What is driving it? And how can it be stopped? The mantra “Get woke, go broke” is popular on the right, but unfortunately it doesn’t seem to be particularly true. The latest controversy is over a “trans” woman, i.e. a man or boy, named Dylan Mulvaney. Who is Mulvaney, and why is he suddenly
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February 9, 2023 — John Hinderaker
This afternoon, I appeared on the “U.S. Report” show on Sky News Australia with host James Morrow. It is a terrific show: the guests ahead of me were Mick Mulvaney and Tammy Bruce. Morrow began our conversation by showing this Disney video: This Disney clip is pure critical race theory, including the insane conspiracy theory that Lincoln did not free the slaves.pic.twitter.com/kLqPUU34Mn — Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) February 5,
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December 7, 2022 — John Hinderaker
Why has pretty much all of big business gone left-wing? There are several theories, none of which seem to me to fully explain the phenomenon. But whatever the causes, the effect is an inescapable part of our daily landscape. Here are a few instances for today. Disney has a new/old CEO in Bob Iger, and many speculated that he would pull back on that company’s extreme leftism. But not for
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November 16, 2022 — John Hinderaker
Target Corporation reported its third quarter results today. The report wasn’t good, in large part because Target stores are being robbed left and right: Target stores are getting looted, and it’s taking a huge bite out of profits. The discount retailer told reporters on a call to discuss its third quarter earnings results that inventory shrinkage — or the disappearance of merchandise — has reduced its gross profit margin by
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November 3, 2022 — John Hinderaker
The slogan “Get woke, go broke” is appealing, but unfortunately it often is not true. Wokeness has turned out all too well–so far, at least–for too many businesses. But injecting left-wing politics into contexts where they don’t belong can have consequences. As Jimmy Kimmel proudly tells us: ABC’s late-night comedian Jimmy Kimmel has made Trump bashing a central part of his TV persona. Now he has publicly admitted that his
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August 30, 2022 — John Hinderaker
One of the most pernicious trends of our day is the employment of “environmental, social and governance” (ESG) criteria in investing. Former Vice President Mike Pence writes at Real Clear Markets: On Wall Street, major investment firms are rating companies based on their adherence to left-wing environmental, social and governance (ESG) values. Like the social credit scores issued by the Chinese Communist Party, a low ESG score can be devastating,
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July 5, 2022 — John Hinderaker
Why corporations see a need to adopt left-wing talking points as corporate policy is a great mystery of our time. I don’t know, maybe sometimes it works out. Other times it doesn’t: just ask the producers of Buzz Lightyear. Today’s heartwarming story comes from the U.K. via Australia, as my friend Rita Panahi comments on a major bank’s effort to jam gender ideology down the throats of its customers: “Get
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June 29, 2022 — John Hinderaker
Several decades ago I subscribed to Bon Appetit magazine. In those days, it was all about good food, consisting of articles about, and recipes from, excellent restaurants. But, as in so many areas of contemporary life, those days are gone. Bon Appetit survives–barely, I think–but its primary mission these days seems to be wokeness. Check out the magazine’s InstaGram feed to see what I mean. Here are some examples: A
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