May31

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Who Is Winning the Culture Wars?

We've been working on this item for a couple of weeks, and every time we try to write it, there's a new "battle" to include. Let's start with a rundown of the big culture wars incidents of the last month or so, in roughly chronological order:

• Bud Light: These days, the kiddies don't watch much TV. So, if a brand wants to reach the whippersnapper crowd, they have to do business with social media influencers. Bud Light decided that it wanted to tap into the under-30 market, and so paid for a product placement with trans social media influencer Dylan Mulvaney. Right-wingers flipped their lids, and are still doing so, with folks like Ted Cruz launching investigations into Bud Light (exactly what is being investigated, who knows). Bud Light's sales are down 30% since the controversy, while the company's response (effectively shunning Mulvaney) has alienated young and LGBTQ people.
  
  
• The Dodgers: Each year, the Los Angeles Dodgers have a Pride Night for LGBTQ fans. This year's Pride Night is scheduled for June 16, and among the invited guests is a group called the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. The group was founded in 1979, and is known for two things: (1) charity work, particularly raising funds for, and providing palliative care for, people with AIDS; (2) staging satirical performances in which male participants dress as nuns. The Dodgers surely knew about this when they invited the Sisters, since the group was not only going to be in attendance, but was also scheduled to receive an award for community service from the team.
  
  Eventually, these plans came to the attention of William A. Donahue, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights. That name sounds pretty reasonable, but the group is actually quite far-right, and Donahue is particularly so. He's written approvingly of the Charlie Hebdo attacks, decreed that "Hollywood is controlled by secular Jews who hate Christianity," implied that LGBTQ people deserve to die, and attacked George W. Bush and Pope Francis for being too liberal.
  
  On May 16, Donahue, another Republican who is apparently not aware of the Streisand effect, sent a letter to the Dodgers demanding that the Sisters' involvement in Pride Night be canceled. In that letter, he wrote:

  We all can agree if a group of white boys in black face—a modern day Al Jolson ensemble—were to be honored by an MLB team, there is little doubt that the event would be cancelled [sic] and sanctions would be forthcoming. There is no difference between this and the hateful farce of awarding the "Sisters."

  We're not so sure that the Sisters' performances are anti-Catholic as much as they are satires of religion and of authority in general. We don't seem to recall people complaining about Father Guido Sarducci, for example, or the show Father Ted, and those also involved performers donning Catholic garb in service of satire. In any case, the moment we got to the paragraph above, which is so profoundly ignorant of history, we could no longer take Donahue's claims seriously. Even if there is a nasty, and even anti-Catholic, edge to the Sisters' performances, blackface was a form of propaganda masquerading as entertainment, and intended to make the argument that Black people are subhuman. It is not possible to mock Catholics, or Texans, or Democrats, or Dodgers fans, or accountants, or nearly any other group in that way because this historical context does not exist for those groups. Yes, there was serious anti-Irish and anti-Catholic bigotry in 19th century America, but it wasn't expressed by people putting on nuns' habits and dancing jigs.
  
  Anyhow, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) loves an opportunity to score some cheap political points, even though neither he nor Donahue live in California. So, the Senator jumped on board, and also demanded the Sisters be canceled. The Dodgers complied, despite the fact that their fans (many of them Catholic; it's Los Angeles, after all) did not object to the plans. Then, the various other LGBTQ groups who had been invited to the event pulled out, and the Dodgers reversed course and told Donahue and Rubio to pound sand. But then, various Christian players, including Dodgers star pitcher Clayton Kershaw, spoke up and said they did not like seeing Christianity mocked. Since the team can hardly cancel the Sisters again, they compensated by re-instituting what was once an annual tradition, namely Christian Faith and Family Day, which will be held on July 30. The Dodgers' opponent on that day is the Cincinnati Reds. If they are going to celebrate Christianity anyhow, why wouldn't they choose a day that the Dodgers are playing either the San Diego Padres or the Los Angeles Angels? Seems like a missed opportunity. Well, unless the team was thinking about a different meaning of the term "Reds," and thought it would be good to bring a little Jesus to a bunch of godless commies.
  
  
• Target: Target has gotten into the habit of selling LGBTQ-themed merchandise in June, because it is pride month. And those LGBTQ-themed items include swimwear, since June is the start of summer. And some of the swimwear the retailer is selling these days is targeted at the "T" part of that, and is "tuck friendly" for MtF trans people who haven't had operations. Is this activism? Is it capitalism? Some of both? Actipitalism? Captivism?
  
  Naturally, some folks on the right took great exception to the LGBTQ gear, particularly the tuck-friendly swimsuits, and pitched a fit. Vivek Ramaswamy, who thinks he is running for president, is one of those people. Charlie Kirk, whose bigotry takes many forms, is another. Cruz and Rubio also jumped in. Target reportedly removed some of the merchandise from their stores, though it's not entirely clear which merchandise and which stores. (Z) visited a Target in liberal Los Angeles yesterday, to see if anything was obviously missing, and the various "offensive" items listed in news reports, including the tuck-friendly suits, were all still there. Presumably the story would have been different at a Target in, say, Oklahoma City.
  
  
• Chick-Fil-A: The fried chicken franchise has a reputation for being conservative and anti-LGBTQ. This may have something to do with its long history of donating money to conservative and anti-LGBTQ causes. Corporate leadership has decided that this reputation is hurting business, as young people and liberals are tending to stay away. So, Chick-fil-A has hired a VP for Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion, and the chain just put out a statement in support of inclusiveness. Even though the statement is framed in Christian terms, and even though it's about as milquetoast as it gets (we know what that word means, whether or not Donald Trump does), people on the right are furious. "It's only a matter of time until they start putting tranny semen in the frosted lemonade at this point," observed one particularly chagrined individual.
  
  
• Disney: No, this isn't the story you're thinking of. As we note at the top, we're limiting ourselves to the last month, and the "Don't Say Gay" business began well before that. The new Disney "controversy" involves their live-action remake of The Little Mermaid, wherein the main character is now—brace yourself—Black. The Daily Wire's resident self-described fascist, Matt Walsh, first went on a rant about how the Little Mermaid is supposed to have white skin and red hair. Apparently, someone pointed out to him that comes from the original Disney take on the material, and that it is not supported by the original Hans Christian Andersen text. At that point, Walsh decided to move onto a "scientific" argument in support of his perspective:

  Also, by the way, with The Little Mermaid—can we also just mention that, from a scientific perspective, it doesn't make a lot of sense to have someone with darker skin who lives deep in the ocean.
  
  I mean, if anything, not only should the Little Mermaid be pale, she should, actually, be translucent. If you look at deep sea creatures, they're, like, translucent. They have no, kind of, pigmentation whatsoever. And they're just, like, these horrifying—they look like skeletons floating around in the ocean. That's what the Little Mermaid should look like. She should be totally pale and skeletal where you can see her skull through her face.
  
  And that would actually be a version of The Little Mermaid that I would watch.

  That might be the most tortured "Make America White Again" argument we've ever seen. How does one even respond to something like that? Perhaps we should point out that if we're sticking with the science, there's no such thing as mermaids. In any case, very few moviegoers under the age of 12 take their cues from Matt Walsh, and so the film's been a runaway hit. It will cross $200 million worldwide today, its 6th day of release.

It's a good thing we didn't wait another week to write this item; by then there might well have been enough news that we would have to have written a book.

Anyhow, as we have written many, many times, businesses do not want to be caught in the middle of these situations. And undoubtedly, some of them will take a look at the incidents above, and others, and will shy away from "inclusive" marketing decisions. In particular, trans people are a relatively small segment of the population, and reaching out to them really upsets a lot of people, so it would not be surprising to see a lot of businesses back away from the "T" part of the LGBTQ equation.

That said, there are a lot of LGBTQ people in the world. Not to mention a lot of non-white people. Gone are the days when businesses could concern themselves with marketing only to straight white people, since everyone else had no better options. At the same time, the employees of these companies will tend to demand inclusive practices, or else will move on to an employer where they feel more comfortable and more heard.

Meanwhile, on the right-wing side, it should be pointed out that a lot of these culture-wars battles are waged in bad faith. To return to Walsh, a week ago he sent out a tweet that lays out the whole strategy: "The goal is to make 'pride' toxic for brands. If they decide to shove this garbage in our face, they should know that they'll pay a price. It won't be worth whatever they think they'll gain. First Bud Light and now Target. Our campaign is making progress. Let's keep it going." This is a fellow, by the way, who consistently argues that he should be allowed to practice his Christian faith as he sees fit, without interference from outsiders. Guess what's good for the goose is not what's good for the gander.

There's no doubt that many of the people being targeted by the Walshes and Cruzes and Rubios and Kirks of the world really are upset by tuck friendly swim suits, and men in nun costumes and Black mermaids. But the leadership is just seizing its opportunities wherever it can find them, and using them to gain power and wealth. It's one of the oldest tricks in the book.

The thing is, it's hard to maintain this kind of outrage for long, particularly when the list of targets is constantly growing. And the list is always growing, because there's always a new outrage. If it's not Disney, it's Mr. Potato Head. Then it's Dr. Seuss. Then it's drag performances in Florida. Then it's books that need to be banned. Then it's some sports team. And then some high school swimmer. And then some department store. And then some fast-food chain. The phrase "Give them an inch and they will take a mile" comes to mind.

The fundamental inefficacy of the right-wing "cancel them" project is indicated by nearly all of the items listed above. The Sisters are still going to be at the Dodgers game on June 16 and will still get their award. Target is still selling plenty of LGBTQ merchandise, Chick-fil-A is still selling plenty of chicken sandwiches, and Disney is still selling plenty of tickets to movies and amusement parks. Bud Light is still feeling the pain, yes, but it was a rather unusual choice for a product with a blue-collar, Trumpy customer base to try to break into the trans market. Plus, let's see where the sales of Bud Light are in a year, by which time the Dylan Mulvaney outrage will have been supplanted by two dozen other outrages.

The conclusion here is this: The right-wingers are not doing particularly well in the culture wars, short-term. And we don't think the long-term prognosis is great, either. We further presume that this dynamic will carry over to the world of politics in 2024, and that any national candidate who builds their campaign substantially on a platform of anti-LGBTQ planks is going to do themselves more harm than good. (Z)