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PaperclipPerfector  11mo ago (text post)   31535 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 22, 2023

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The Bud Light boycott continues. Anheuser-Busch is responding by sponsoring vet groups and commissioning ads that "will play heavily on themes such as football and country music". A glance at conservative comment sections reveals a few vocal consumers vowing that no amount of patriotic pandering will change their mind and that they will continue the boycott no matter what.

I am reminded of this apocryphical exchange between two Chinese officers late for battle:

What is the punishment for being late?

Death.

What is the punishment for rebellion?

Death.

Rebellion it is.

That is to say, a proper incentive structure should not only contain costs for injecting woke politics into business but also rewards for backpedalling.

On the other hand, the undisputed champions of pushing business and people around do not seem too keen on accepting apology. Or do they? The bottom line seems to be: If your public kowtow is more valuable for the propagation of the movement than the display of your head on a spike, you may get another chance (unless and untilyou even slightly step out of line again).

This seems ideal because the incentives for the victim thus contain an effectiveness criterion. Mouthing platitudes is not enough, you need to actually further the cause of your attackers. The uncertainty ups the ante for the victim.

On the other other hand, woke shaming campaigns might not be the ideal blue print for convervatives, given their lack of clout and high-brow media capture.

They've already committed rebellion in the minds of many, and it's too late for them to back off now.

and it's too late for them to back off now

If that were the case, the rational strategy for them would be to market themselves aggressively as the woke drink of choice, not to put out country music ads and camo cans. Which presumably is the opposite of what the anti-woke want.

Well, Miller Lite who were picking up part of the switched custom from Bud Light, went and put out this ad.

As a woman (though not a beer drinker), I hate it. They want to show the role of women in brewing, and instead of showing us Babylonian goddesses and Finnish boozing parties, they give us a scold talking about shit. Does she look like she's ever drunk a beer for fun, instead of standing around giving lectures on feminism while everyone else was trying to have a party?

Well, shit is appropriate here. But guys, using naughty words that would shock Mrs. Grundy is every bit as stuck in the 70s as your blondes in bikinis.

I'd like to see women growers talking about strains of barley or hops for the beer, starting with the goddesses and ending with modern breweries.

And no shit anywhere.

Have a Tolkien quote from one of the Letters, and doesn't this sound more fun than "dig around in your parents' basement for evidence of Wrong Think and send it in to us, ya snitches"?

A propos of bullfinches, did you know that they had a connexion with the noble art of brewing ale? I was looking at the Kalevala the other day – one of the books which I don't think you have yet read? Or have you? – and I came across Runo XX, which I used to like: it deals largely with the origin of beer. When the fermentation was first managed, the beer was only in birch tubs and it foamed all over the place, and of course the heroes came and lapped it up, and got mightily drunk. Drunk was Ahti, drunk was Kauko, drunken was the ruddy rascal, with the ale of Osmo's daughter – Kirby's translation is funnier than the original. It was the bullfinch who then suggested to Osmo's daughter the notion of putting the stuff in oak casks with hoops of copper and storing it in a cellar. Thus was ale at first created. . . best of drinks for prudent people; Women soon it brings to laughter. Men it warms into good humour, but it brings the fools to raving. Sound sentiments.

Man, I'm definitely not familiar with that one. Which letter was it from?

75 To Christopher Tolkien

7 July 1944 (FS 36)

I feel like I'm starting to treat Tolkien's Letters as Gospel and I acting as his prophet 😁 But there's a lot in them about his own views and opinions, as well as the writing, that really comes in handy when people pipe up about "well of course he was a reactionary who loved feudalism" and the likes. From another letter of 1944 to Christopher, about travelling by train from Oxford to a school reunion in his home town:

I found myself in a carriage occupied by an R.A.F. officer (this war's wings, who had been to South Africa though he looked a bit elderly), and a very nice young American Officer, New-Englander. I stood the hot-air they let off as long as I could; but when I heard the Yank burbling about 'Feudalism' and its results on English class-distinctions and social behaviour, I opened a broadside. The poor boob had not, of course, the very faintest notions about 'Feudalism', or history at all – being a chemical engineer. But you can't knock 'Feudalism' out of an American's head, any more than the 'Oxford Accent'. He was impressed I think when I said that an Englishman's relations with porters, butlers, and tradesmen had as much connexion with 'Feudalism' as skyscrapers had with Red Indian wigwams, or taking off one's hat to a lady has with the modern methods of collecting Income Tax; but I am certain he was not convinced. I did however get a dim notion into his head that the 'Oxford Accent' (by which he politely told me he meant mine) was not 'forced' and 'put on', but a natural one learned in the nursery – and was moreover not feudal or aristocratic but a very middle-class bourgeois invention. After I told him that his 'accent' sounded to me like English after being wiped over with a dirty sponge, and generally suggested (falsely) to an English observer that, together with American slouch, it indicated a slovenly and ill-disciplined people – well, we got quite friendly. We had some bad coffee in the refreshment room at Snow Hill, and parted.

I for one am supportive of this new character arc. It’s almost like this gentleman had a way with words.

But he's a Dead White Male. That's why the "Rings of Power" had to update his work for a modern, inclusive audience and succeed in making me cheer for the Lord Orc Father - I beg his pardon, they prefer "Uruk", respect their pronouns!

(Seriously, when you have your Girlboss Heroine and the Villain engaging in a face-to-face exchange, and the villain monologue which establishes one of them as a ruthless, sadistic psychopath who revels in torture and slaughter doesn't come from the Orc-Father, and he's the one who comes across as both sane and sympathetic, you done fudged up).

I thought that had to be intentional, and snuck in by the one competent writer on the crew. It was so blatant.

More comments

It was a weird moment when I realized that the cancelled 1970s Boorman script was truer to Galadriel's character than RoP...

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Does she look like she's ever drunk a beer for fun, instead of standing around giving lectures on feminism while everyone else was trying to have a party?

Much of the appeal of her Comedy Central show Broad City was Ilana being half naked and partying a lot. Not sure how much was a completely fabricated character, but if it's based partially on her then she was probably pretty fun to be around in her college days.

Then that makes it even more hypocritical of her, if she was a Fun Party Girl in her college years, to be turning her nose up at "they put us in bikinis".

It's just a stunningly stupid ad; it's insulting men, it's treating women like we have no brains, and it tells nothing about real women growers of the ingredients for the beer, just a bunch of actresses willing to talk about "shit".

They would have liked to -- their former marketing person thought they could -- but smarter heads realize that isn't going to work. So they are trying to backpedal, but it may be too late.

Do you think woke urbanites are going to start drinking Bud Light now because of a marketing campaign?

Bud Light's move is absolutely the correct one here. True, they have already revealed themselves to hate their core audience. It's going to take a lot of grovelling to get them back. But that's still easier in the long run than getting wine snobs to start drinking Bud Light.

This might be the point you were making, just spelling it out...

Bud Light's move is absolutely the correct one here. It's true they have revealed themselves to hate their core audience. It's going to take a lot of grovelling to get them back. But it's possible. Whereas getting a wine snob to start drinking Bud Light is impossible.

That would require some of the boycotters to abandon their maximalist "never touching Bud again" stance. The viability of that stance is what I wanted to discuss here.

What you describe above only works if Bud abstinence is conditional.

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