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« Reply #1 on: January 17, 2019, 04:54:19 PM » |
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The Patriot Post Digest 1-17-2019
From The Federalist Patriot
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FEATURED ANALYSIS
The Razor’s Edginess41
Arnold Ahlert
Procter & Gamble Co. has joined the ranks of the corporate virtue signalers catering to the terminally offended. Their target? “Toxic” males — to whom they still intend to sell razor blades.
The company is building a new ad campaign42 around its “The Best A Man Can Get” tagline, melding it with the #MeToo movement. After opening with “news” about that movement, the ad’s narrator asserts that the notion “boys will be boys” no longer makes the grade. “Is this the best a man can get?” the narrator asks. “Is it? We can’t hide from it. It has been going on far too long. We can’t laugh it off, making the same old excuses.”
Pankaj Bhalla, Gillette brand director for North America, explained P&G’s strategy: “This is an important conversation happening, and as a company that encourages men to be their best, we feel compelled to both address it and take action of our own. We are taking a realistic look at what’s happening today, and aiming to inspire change by acknowledging that the old saying ‘Boys Will Be Boys’ is not an excuse.”
A “realistic look” according to whom? The whiners who insist that an acceptable definition of masculinity requires all men to embrace their inner Pajama Boy43? How about the “settled science” crowd, which insists gender is “fluid?” Can a “toxic male” be trapped in a woman’s body, just waiting to get out — and offend?
As The Patriot Post’s Thomas Gallatin reminds us44, an American Psychological Association (APA) poisoned by “progressive” dogma “is guided by the leftist theory that gender is a nonbinary social construct rather than a binary reality based upon biology. But even at that, one particular gender is just the worst.”
And for nearly two minutes, the Grey New York ad agency makes sure that message is hammered home45. The ad depicts the bullying of a boy by fellow teenagers who text disparaging messages to him that appear onscreen as he is shown being hugged by his mother. Another scene depicts a boardroom and a man patting a woman on the shoulder while saying, “What I think she’s actually trying to say…” It also includes a clip of former NFL player Terry Crews telling Congress he was sexually harassed. “Men need to hold other men accountable,” Crews states.
Enter the narrator again. “Some already are,” the narrator states. “But some is not enough. Because the boys watching today will be the men of tomorrow.”
Make that the docile, emasculated men of tomorrow if the APA and P&G get their way.
Like so many aspects of leftist dogma, the presumption of collective guilt hangs heavy in the air. In other words, “toxic” is the default position for every man insufficiently attuned to the higher consciousness advocated by these self-aggrandizing doyens of political correctness. “It’s time we acknowledge that brands, like ours, play a role in influencing culture. We have a responsibility to make sure we are promoting positive, attainable, inclusive and healthy versions of what it means to be a man,” P&G stated. “With that in mind, we have spent the last few months taking a hard look at our past and coming communication and reflecting on the types of men and behaviors we want to celebrate. We pledge to actively challenge the stereotypes and expectations of what it means to be a man everywhere you see Gillette. In the ads we run, the images we publish to social media, the words we choose, and so much more.”
P&G wants to challenge stereotypes and expectations? Try challenging a toxic culture — one that celebrates fatherlessness46 as an “alternative lifestyle” and ridicules religious values that transmit common decency and decorum.
Has P&G taken a hard look at the possibility that an ad campaign that lectures potential customers about their shortcomings might alienate those customers? Or, like Nike47, has the company calculated that nurturing the victimist mentality will engender enough sales to offset those alienated customers?
PJ Media’s Jim Treacher aptly describes48 where P&G is coming from. “Consumers, men in particular, must be made to feel worthless,” he explains. “They have to be reminded that their needs and desires are wrong under any circumstances, that their instincts are loathsome, that their very existence is a malignancy, and that they’re responsible for all the world’s ills whether they want to admit it or not.”
“Now give [P&G] your money, you piece of garbage.”
Millions of Americans have zero interest in such pompous pretentiousness. They’re sick and tired of being lectured, cajoled, berated, and bombarded by a collection of self-appointed blowhards who have the unmitigated gall to believe they, and they alone, own the franchise on enlightened thinking, even as they remain utterly oblivious to their own humorless, hypocritical, and overbearing shortcomings.
Those shortcomings erupted like a volcano following the 2016 election. And in keeping with the metaphor, the insufferable “progressive” self-righteousness that has infected awards shows, football, movies, TV, and advertising is the ongoing lava flow.
The best antidote? Laughter and ridicule — and in this particular case, a number49 of competing direct-to-consumer subscription razor clubs that sell razor blades at considerably cheaper prices — minus the proselytizing.
That’s the best a man can get.
https://patriotpost.us/articles/60587-the-razors-edginess
OPINION IN BRIEF
Victor Davis Hanson: “Whether or not they like Trump, millions of voters still think the president is all that stands between them and socialism, radical cultural transformation and social chaos. Many would prefer Trump’s sometimes-over-the-top tweets and hard bark to the circus they saw at the Brett Kavanaugh nomination hearings, the rantings of Ocasio-Cortez, or the endless attempts to remove Trump from office. What usually ensure one-term presidencies are unpopular wars (Lyndon Johnson) or tough economic times (Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush). If Trump avoids both, perhaps a majority of voters will see him as political chemotherapy — occasionally nausea-inducing but still necessary and largely effective — to stop a toxic and metastasizing political cancer.”
SHORT CUTS
Insight: “To curtail free expression strikes twice at intellectual freedom, for whoever deprives another of the right to state unpopular views necessarily deprives others of the right to listen to those views.” —C. Van Woodward (1908-1999)
For the record: “Nancy Pelosi wants Trump to postpone his State of the Union address due to a government shutdown yet she didn’t postpone her luxury vacation to Hawaii when the government was shutdown.” —Charlie Kirk
Political theater: “What is the State of the Union? The government is closed because of President Trump. If it continues to be closed on the 29th, I think it’s a good idea to delay it until the government is open.” —Chuck Schumer
The BIG Lie: “If Joe Biden gets in, he’s kind of the quintessential centrist, if you will.” —CNN’s Kate Bolduan
Non Compos Mentis: “Conservatives are thrilled a woman with a concealed-carry permit shot and killed a 19-year-old would-be mugger. That’s not how justice works. The penalty for theft is not death, nor do we want it to be.” —Think Progress editor Zack Ford, who added: “The fact she was able to protect herself in no way motivates me to change my belief that she should not have had a gun in the first place.” He also stated, “Of course I don’t think he should have had a gun either, but if she had let him rob her, even at gunpoint, both likely would have survived.” (“What happens if, having collected her purse, the mugger decides to drag her around the corner and rape her? Should she let that happen too? What if he’s high and shoots her for no real reason? The point is, Zack Ford has no idea what would have happened next if the woman hadn’t been armed. More importantly, she had no idea either.” —John Sexton)
And last… “Karen Pence teaches at school that defines marriage as one man & one woman! Nancy Pelosi belongs to [a] church that defines marriage as one man & one woman! Guess which woman liberals attack.” —Liz Wheeler
https://patriotpost.us/articles/60605-thursday-short-cuts
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Semper Vigilans Fortis Paratus et Fidelis
Nate Jackson, Managing Editor
Mark Alexander, Publisher |
