“I hope you don’t mean that. You’d feel pretty sad if you woke up tomorrow morning and you didn’t have a family.” – Home Alone
I’m so woke I started a Green Lives Matter chapter after watching Shrek®.
When The Boy was very small, say four years old, we’d snuggle together and watch television together on Saturday mornings. One thing we watched on a regular basis was the Hallmark® channel. Sometimes I’d make pancakes. It was fun as only a Saturday with your kids can be.
Most often, we’d watch an episode of the High Chaparral® and then an older family movie – movies like Old Yeller™ or The Cat from Outer Space©. The Boy did note that air traffic control must have been difficult in Never Neverland because of all of the fuel emergencies. Get it? Never land? I kill me.
I’m too young to have seen High Chaparral™ as anything but reruns, but watching it with The Boy was great. The plots involved good guys and bad guys – tales of honor. Tales of family. Tales of manly courage. Every one of those lessons was one that I’d like to have imprinted on The Boy’s brain. Sure, maybe I’d have a winter morning nap through The Cat from Outer Space®, but I never slept through High Chaparral©.
Okay, how could you nap after that theme music?
At this point I don’t remember if they stopped showing High Chaparral™ before or after we moved to Alaska, but I did know that in Alaska we didn’t have the Hallmark™ channel, so it didn’t matter anyway. And it’s been a few years since Pugsley needed babysitting on a Saturday morning.
Needless to say, I have pleasant memories of the Hallmark® channel. However, in the last week Hallmark® did the craziest thing. First, a commercial was approved showing two women lip-locking in a commercial about weddings during a family movie where little kids might be watching. This provoked outrage in the Traditional Religious community, and they complained to Hallmark©. Following that outrage, Hallmark™ then pulled the commercial, and apologized for showing it.
All said and done?
No. Within about 48 hours of pulling the commercial, Hallmark® then said they’d be fine with showing that commercial, and their earlier statement saying that they made a mistake by saying that they’d made a mistake was a mistake, so they apologized for apologizing earlier. Then, at great expense, they redid their apology using llamas.
This was not entirely a surprise: the CEO of the television portion of Hallmark©, William J. Abbott, said in a November 15 podcast he doesn’t personally view Christmas as a religious holiday. He probably doesn’t consider churches religious places. And those T-shaped things that people put on the walls and wear as necklaces? Just art.
I swear, with those eyes he looks like some kind of herd animal. It’s not like he’d be easily swayed like a member of a herd of sheep . . . oh, wait.
Regardless of what you think about gay people, they comprise 1-2% of the population – add in bisexuals, (which, let’s admit it, they’d like) and you get up to 4% or so. I’m willing to bet that a whopping 0.001% of gay women watch Hallmark®, and probably nearly 0.0000001% of gay men. Hallmark™ has decided to appeal to a constituency that consists of about a dozen people in the United States and let them determine what commercials are on the Hallmark© channel.
Let’s face it: regardless of how you or I feel about gay folks, they don’t watch the Hallmark® network. They won’t watch the Hallmark© network even if it meets every one of their demands because they already have six networks specifically dedicated to gay lifestyle issues.
Why would Hallmark™ fold and apologize about apologizing for their apology?
Because Hallmark© is woke. Christmas isn’t a religious holiday according to their CEO, silly. It’s about mass consumption of consumer goods. That was the real message of Christ, wasn’t it? I think it was in the Sermon on the Mall Food Court as written in the Gospel of Commerce, 3:16 where Jesus said: “Oh, ye who purchase goods and services in my name shall dwell in large houses with great credit forever. Forget not, thy shipping shalt be free for all who order over $50 of these holy goods in a single shipment. Amen.”
Hallmark© isn’t the first business to make this calculation. It won’t be the last.
Silicon Valley is good at getting woke, especially since aliens don’t need sleep.
I started my first boycott of a business back in 2001 or so. The CEO of Levi Strauss™ came out against private gun ownership. I was naïve enough that I actually wrote him an email protesting his policy. At the time, I was a corporate home-office drone who wore Dockers® (a Levi Strauss© product) like they were yuppie heroin. I put my money where my mouth was: the last Levi Strauss™ product I have ever purchased was in 2001.
Another example of this illogical behavior was Star Wars®. The final Star Wars™ movie opens today. I won’t be purchasing a ticket. Why? The Force Awakens.
For the record, I have no problem against strong female characters. Ripley® in Alien© and Aliens™. Sarah Connor™ in Terminator©, Terminator 2®, and the very underrated Sarah Connor Chronicles™. I could go on, but that’s enough.
Rey© in Star Wars™? An awful character. But a woke character. It was so important to a Disney® executive to take Star Wars© in a feminist direction that they didn’t care about story. They didn’t care about plot. All they cared about was creating a woman that had no weaknesses, no struggle. In great fiction, the entire point of the journey of a hero is to struggle and overcome weaknesses and character flaws to find virtue and victory.
Somehow, in a quest for the perfect woman, Disney® forgot Star Wars© was about watching the journey of the hero and thrilling with him (or her) as they grew. Ripley™ grew – look at her character arc from the only two movies that character was in, Alien® and Aliens©. Ripley™ went from a competent but flawed second officer to a woman who overcame her fear and took on a xenomorph queen using an exoskeleton loader. Don’t know about you, but I thought that was pretty hot, even when she was Zuul. Okay, especially when she was Zuul.
Rey™? Rey™ was perfect from the first scene, and could use the Force© and a Light Saber© better than a person who had studied them for years the very first day she tried. Why? Showing any weakness from a woman is obviously misogyny and part of a patriarchal plot. Character development? Nah, that’s for people who aren’t woke.
What has being woke cost Disney®? A lot of money. The Star Wars® movies keep bringing in less and less at the box office. And, as Aesop wisely noted – their theme park Galaxy’s Edge© at Disneyland™ cost over $1billion dollars, and, if videos I’ve seen are correct, is an enormous flop. The longest line was at the bathroom. I’d imagine the Disneyworld™ version won’t cost much less, so they’ve invested $2billion in a franchise that has exactly one successful element since they bought it from George Lucas: baby Yoda®.
Probably billions in profits have been sacrificed by Disney®, all at the altar of being woke.
If John Wick© and Kermit™ had a baby.
Other companies have done it, too. Gillette® featured commercials that demeaned the major purchasers of its products: men. Nike™ decided that Colin Kaepernick was the best face that they could put forward, and ended production of shoes featuring the Betsy Ross flag because Colin thought it was racist. Chick-Fil-A®? Dead to me.
The Boy Scouts of America™? Yup. In 1973, the membership was 4.5 million boys. In 2020, I’m betting the membership is down to 1.4 million or less, even though the population of the United States is up by 50%. The biggest and steepest declines? After it got woke.
One Angry Gamer has a large list of similar failures (LINK). The list has 13 major video games that failed due to wokeness. Movies and television? 21 examples. And dozens of businesses, magazines, and other examples of failure. The most amusing part of his page (which is littered with advertisements) is that it was advertising failed woke shows like Star Trek: Discovery®. One Angry Gamer was getting money from those that were being criticized on the page. Genius.
Remember, not everything is a failure. The Titanic pool is still filled!
Not every business that gets woke goes broke. Even though they won’t get another dollar from me, Nike®, Levi Strauss©, and Gillette™ are doing fine. They make billions in revenue. I can’t promise Disney® won’t make another dollar off of me, since they have a scheme to annex interstellar space and charge viewers for looking up at the night sky. But I’ll avoid giving them money every chance I get. They might not notice on their bottom line, but I will be able to hold my head up.
So, why are companies willing to fail or at least forego billions of dollars in profit, destroy cultural narratives that have been decades in the making, and wipe out institutions that have served real virtue and objective good for over a hundred years?
It’s not their money.
But I do have good news. I found that High Chaparral® is still being broadcast. It’s not on Hallmark™. But I’m pretty sure that The Boy would object to being snuggled on the couch to watch it, him being in college and all.
But he still likes pancakes. Who doesn’t?
Oh, yeah.
Feminists.
https://www.pickeringpost.com/howellwoltz/10125/gillette-cuts-its-own-throat/
Gillette® may not be doing as well as we thought.
Good!
Wait. What a shame such a socially responsible company is failing.
Oh, see my tears. /s
A couple of comments on various points.
Regarding “sexually charged Hallmark commercials”, I came across this article…..
https://www.gq.com/story/folgers-incest-ad-oral-history#intcid=recommendations_gq-right-rail-popular_4ebc1729-371c-4c54-bc1d-407f04a9f2e1_popular4-1
about this 20 year old commercial….
https://youtu.be/yOQk_pWmisA
Huh.
Second, altho I will not be going to see Last Travesty of Skywalker, I am at least TEMPTED to do so because my FAVORITE actress is playing a new character Zorri Bliss…..
https://calgaryherald.com/entertainment/movies/how-kerri-russell-disappeared-into-the-mysterious-faceless-role-of-zorii-bliss-in-the-rise-of-skywalker
Even if she doesn’t take her helmet off in the whole film, it’s KERRI. Elizabeth Felicity Jennings. Forget “woke Rey”, Kerri is the actress who nailed what a Strong Woman REALLY is during her blockbuster performance in The Americans. If you never watched that show, I envy you….you get to binge watch it now. It’s got as much adventure and more guns than High Chaparral !!! A great show to watch with your kids – it’s even about how to raise them (as a Russian spy).
https://youtu.be/goNF0xt8mI4
Finally, speaking of “more guns”…
https://www.theorganicprepper.com/virginia-activates-militia-felony/
About the 20-year-old commercial: I followed the link (thanks!) and watched it, then followed the GQ link and read that. Maybe I’m blind, but the brother-sister sex thing that is apparently so obvious to everyone isn’t obvious to me at all. The exchanged glances that the GQ writer described as “flirty?” To me, it looked like normal love between siblings, overlaid with some aw-shucks embarrassment at its expression.
It’s seriously difficult for me to conclude that anyone was trying to normalize incest 20 years ago, when I don’t think the “culture” is quite that woke even today.
I really enjoyed The Americans.
Wow – had no idea that they had twisted an obviously normal commercial into that.
Wow.
The woke decision makers always make their money, whether or not the company does. When the company tanks, the wokest get hired on at other companies, because they’re all members of the same club.
It’s not a conspiracy, it’s a movement.
And we’re not in it.
Thankfully.
“Designated Survivor” was already fairly woke before it moved to Netflix and became insufferably woke, but we watched it at first because the premise was intriguing and you didn’t know what was going to happen next…and to see what new super powers were going to be written into 90 lb Hannah Wells’ character like those abilities of Mr. Spok that appeared when the writers wrote themselves into a corner. We lost interest about the time the president’s (The Designated Whisperer) transgender inlaw moved into the White House to raise the Whisperer’s daughter, but not because we’re not woke. We’re four cups of Bustelo woke. We left because Netflix killed off Hannah Wells. OK maybe we’re not so woke because we always doubted that 90 lbs. of supershero was sufficient to kick down a steel door. In any event, I think it’s cyclical. The demise of the alpha male leads to barbarians at the gate, which leads to the resurgent popularity of the alpha male. Or…maybe the 1% just wants us to believe that the non woke, alpha male regular guy is in decline, because I’m not seeing any empty seats at football games and ticket prices are outrageous.
Thanks for warning me off – it looked interesting, but I never quite found time to watch it. That also tells me why he villains on 24 were always actually Americans.
I tend to think that the going ‘Woke’ movement is done by corporate executives so they can feel secure that they still belong to the ‘club’ of other woke people. If it were virtue signalling it would have some virtue but we all know the numbers and reality say different. As mentioned the true percentages of people who are the target group of this movement are fringe numbers at best.
Used to be advertising aimed to the broadest audience. These days it is not sales that are the issue. The literally unlimited amount of content available does two things to the consumer. One is bury them with choices and two, make the choices so cheap that people keep paying for something even if they do not use it. I do this myself with a couple of streaming services on the odd chance that something good might come along. So, what we have to realize is that marketing and virtue signalling are not related.
This leaves the only purpose of virtue signalling as being a benefit to the executives of any company. We see the discrimination of conservatives in holly weird and the media industry in general and I am sure various movements are tossed out for the executive plebes to follow to test their loyalty and not for any real virtuous reason. These people want to belong to the ‘club’.
You have to remember that media corporations are not political parties. Even their political activities are designed solely to maintain loyalty in their fellow industry members. They make a lot of noise but in the long run as soon as the cameras stop rolling they go back to their million dollar estates and country clubs and leave agenda work to the drones of regular society.
Our best bet in regards to the actions such as Hallmark has done is to ignore them, move to other sources and punish them with our pocketbooks. In other words don’t support them. I would add, don’t waste a lot of time pointing this out. Tell those you can and why and move on. Our living our lives with the values we want and supporting businesses we like is our best revenge.
Agreed – the only way this scam works is with other people’s money. And, yeah – voting that way is important.
Here is an insightful commentary on how modern advertising works.
http://stonetoss.com/comic/burger-kang/
The CEO of the Hallmark Channel looks like The Addams Family Uncle Fester’s high school reunion photo. Why does his right eye appear to be smaller than the left ?
I know, right???? And this is the BEST PICTURE they have of this guy.
I agree! (Mostly)
I stopped wearing Levi’s, (my go-to jeans), for the same reason. Star Wars has become unwatchable for the reasons you cite, and on and on…
I disagree about the Boy Scouts.
I’m an Eagle Scout and the father of one. It was a game-changer in my life, and I’ve chosen it as my “hill to die on.” I’ve recently gotten involved through my church with bringing a Pack and Troop over from a church which no longer wanted them.
Whatever insanity goes on at the national level (and there’s plenty to list), the product, boys learning to be men of good character, happens at the local level, the Pack, Troop, etc… I’m going to do my best to see that that can happen for this generation of boys, (and now girls).
Not a fan of the girl thing, boys need their place to be boys.
Of course, YMMV.
The Boy Scouts are a people driven activity and as in all of things like this, how well it works is dependent entirely upon who is running it locally. I applaud you and your son’s achievements of attaining the rank of Eagle Scout and I know a couple of scouts who have attained that myself and it is not an easy path. This accomplishment takes dedication of the Scout, his parents (his father especially) and his Scout leader.
The sadness around the Boy Scouts is that they were targeted for destruction by the left as a part of their war upon masculinity. The left abhors Alpha Males because they cannot be easily controlled. Boys who grow up encouraged to achieve and to lead become Alphas and maintain the archetype. The left has painted the classic ‘Alpha male’ as being a negative role model and uses this as justification in their attempts to destroy the institutions of our nation.
I would add, America was founded and flourished under Alpha males to be an independent and self reliant nation. These qualities do not mesh well with the socialism template of dependency and weakness.
We are so outnumbered in many ways in our battles to try to protect and preserve the aspects of our nation that have given us the lifestyles we enjoy. Our best strategy is to continue what we do. The election of Trump is a harbinger of candidates to come. No longer will being a part of the inner circle be a requirement to attain high office. Trump’s biggest virtue is his ability to communicate and resonate with the average American. He does not speak in the coded language of the deep state and he has taken them on and is winning. Hopefully, as we see the left finally start to lose some of their gains we will see the return to the proven social values that have gotten us to where we are. In time, companies like Hallmark will take notice and act accordingly.
Bones, I 100% agree. Pugsley is moving through the ranks, and The Boy is an Eagle.
You’re right – whatever happens nationally doesn’t affect the troop, but it does since the kids themselves know that the values they hold dear are being sold out. Scouting is in its last generation – and that makes me sad.
Let us keep the torch burning as long as we can.
For regular updates on the raging dumpster fire that is Disney, and much of the rest of woketard cultural devolution, I highly recommend the Clownfish TV channel on YouTube.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4gD0czpXVv_LpADTSU624g
They’re wy inside on most topics, spot on target, generally ahead of the curve, they take no crap, and pull no punches.
Two thumbs up.
They’ve also scrupulously documented the Flaming Bag of Doggie Pooh Disney has left on moviegoers’ doorsteps with each and every craptastic offering since The Farce Awakens.
I’d review Disney’s latest dumptruck of offal, but I won’t be even watching it until it’s in the $5 Fin Bin at WallyMart (unless I can find it used for even less at the local DVD swapmart; ditto for The Worst Jedi, which I didn’t see either).
Disney Inc. lost both their minds and their soul when Walt died, and they’re probably never getting it back short of a purge of senior executives of biblical proportions. Using actual chainsaws and wood chippers.
Everything they’ve done since at least 1970 has been a deliberate effort to keep him spinning in his grave.
At this point, a dynamo rigged to his coffin would power the studio and the theme park in California, unassisted.
I saw The Worst Jedi (I like that) on Netflix. Disappointing in many, many ways. Lucas made it boring (The Phantom Menace) and really needed someone who could tell him “no.”
Disney needs an exorcist.
I remember seeing only parts of “The High Chaparral” on television, since it started at 9:00 on Sunday evening, which was past my bedtime. Seeing it in color for the first time was a wonderful experience. Unfortunately it was a few years before we could afford a color television.
Disney, at that time, was still under the direction of Walt.
Yup. I think we all miss Walt.
Good Lord, do I LOATHE that insipid aphorism ‘woke’, for it signifies precisely the opposite of what it means to users in the modern parlance. They think it means ‘enlightened’, as in, “We used to think that gay men were just emotional, disease-ridden, mincing little manlets who aspired to be little girls in pink party dresses. But now that we are ‘woke’ we finally understand that gay men are actually emotional, disease-ridden mincing little manlets who aspire to be little girls in multi-colored party dresses. With taffeta bustles. And chaps. And we’re cool with that.”
What it really means is that the keepers of modern civility and taste are very much asleep at the wheel in an era where anything goes, and the only things that are taboo any longer are those that were once civil and tasteful. The tattooed SuperChick fantasy that has pervaded all of modern culture has rendered me, a former ‘gentleman’, into a grumbling curmudgeon who refuses to hold the door for any woman under 50 and who has been known to hand the plunger to my “liberal, woke daughter-in-law” after she has once again overstuffed the toilet with half a roll of paper (Why the hell do they DO that?!?) while attempting to fist-bump her to a lusty, “You go, girl!”
But do not despair, ye of wavering faith. ALL things eventually come around full-circle. I predict that before the last of us shuffle off this mortal coil, gay men will rediscover the closet, feminists will rue having escaped the protective thumb of patriarchy and even our dusky brethren will pine for the safety and security of plantation life. Hope I live to see it.
Perfectly said. In an era of moral relativism, everything is good – “do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.”
That period never lasts.
“But do not despair, ye of wavering faith. ALL things eventually come around full-circle.”
Yes, but historically the pendulum swings too far in the opposite direction before balance is achieved….the reign of Oliver Cromwell, witch hunts, etc. I’m currently watching the TV series “The Handmaid’s Tale”, a dystopian propaganda piece where far-right-extremist-Christians win the war and take over the US. Of course, their world is far worse than what they replaced and the same politics and elites with their hypocritical rules still abound. As disturbing as the show is, where the once free are forced into slavery, it’s educational to keep one aware that enemies are on all fronts and the old adage of ‘wolves in sheep’s clothing’ is more relevant today than at any time in my 60+ years on the planet.
It won’t matter, because most of the same people who talk about boycotting “woke” movies will still go see some other movies which subsidizes the studios that produce this crap. We think Hollywood is about making money but it is really about transforming the entire culture. As usual, conservatives are fighting like hell on the wrong battlefield against the wrong enemy.
2019 has been, by far, the worst year in movies in my memory. Most of the things out are junk. I don’t even have to boycott most of it: I have no desire to see it.
Gillette lost this customer of 35 years. The craziest thing is they haven’t taken down the ad from their YouTube channel and failing to do so costs them customers every day it remains up. How? Well, men like me show other men the advertisement and merely point out that Gillette thinks they’re a rapist who bashes women and that they (the guy I’m talking to) should stop it.
Perfectly on point. I’m happy to let them hang themselves, though. Never interrupt an enemy when they are making a mistake . . . .
Gillette is a sub of Proctor and Gamble. Almost every Sunday, there is a P&G coupon flyer included in the newspaper. Right into the recycle. Everything they make has an alternative to purchase.
Can someone explain why *red* is considered the color of the republican partly and the democrats use blue? (i vaguely recall brief mentionings of that) but it totally confuses me at this point…RED is the color of the commies, or not anymore?
I’m an 80’s child that grew up in an east coast suburb. Also an Eagle Scout. As i think back, such a “membership in an elite paramilitary organization” was not thought of well at the teenage level. (the quote refers to the 80’s edition of the movie Red Dawn). Are there older folks…(heck, anyone of ANY age) that can report the prevailing regard for this youth activity? Personally, glad to have been a participant, even though it was an unpopular activity there in my location…
I’m with you – but it’s been co-opted by the right after that silly map that showed Republican votes in red, Democrat in blue. Trump followed through with his MAGA hats.
I’d much prefer blue.
The shift occurred on TV electoral maps once Fat Bill was elected in 1992, and no one mentioned it.
After being the Red Party (for obvious deep-rooted ideological reasons) since…Ever, the Ds were suddenly blue.
The sham was not reversed in 2000, nor now.
This is how propaganda works.
“War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.”
You will see this material again.
Pretty much 24/7/365, every day until we start hanging politicians and their Leftard media mouthpiece cheerleaders from lamp posts, with wire.
Stock up on wire; there’s going to be a lot of work to do.
Yes. I’d just love to see them publicly announce the executive that greenlit that commercial was fired. I’d still not buy their stuff, but it would make me smile.
If you think The Last Jedi was bad…
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/star_wars_the_rise_of_skywalker
Yup – looks bad. But the last three movies have been horrible. Rogue One was okay, but Solo was a disappointment, too.
They have managed to turn off adult fans, and also bore the kids. That takes a special kind of dumb.
“Never ascribe to stupidity that which can best be explained by pure malign intent.”
Disney didn’t slip up with Star Wars.
They grabbed it by the throat and held it underwater until it stopped kicking and the bubbles dissipated.
Lazy and stupid is always bad.
Enthusiastic, stupid, and evil is far worse, and how you go horribly wrong.
Disney is Stage IV cancer wrong.
Allgemeine SS rounding up untermenschen wrong.
Palpatine and stormtroopers killing younglings wrong.
But with fluffy sugar frosting and rainbow sprinkles on top.
And they like it that way.
Yup. Evil is the word.
i *DID* like the revealing of Ray’s (Rahy? Gehy?) mysterious past…and *this* Star Wars savant doesn’t know the canon well enough to be upset by the rectal rewriting that so many have complained about…in fact Aesop’s review of “the Farce awakens” DEFINITELY allowed me to let “the bar” fall onto the floor, and thus, i have ENJOYED most of these new saga additions. For example, i enjoyed getting a glimpse of RED 5, and really, the advances in corrosion resistance is astounding! Um, wait, well if the story location is in a galaxy far far away, then with delays in space travel *could* mean those corrosion resistance methods haven’t arrived here yet? *OR* they are lost arts like “Damascus steel” perhaps?
Heh!
I haven’t seen it, but have heard the plot pretty well. What did I want? I wanted a story of heroes – strong men and women who fight unambiguously for good, even though they might not be strong enough to win. Because fighting for truth and good is always a winner . . . .
And how do you keep things from rusting?
Star Wars has no salt. See? Easy.