0:00

Michael. Peter. What do you know about the backlash

0:02

to corporate pride? All I know is that

0:04

it will be refreshing to have a pride month that is

0:07

exhausting, but not because of the gays.

0:22

You texted earlier this week and said

0:24

that you wanted to do a bonus episode

0:27

on the Target backlash and

0:29

the institution of corporate

0:31

pride in general. And my

0:33

initial gut instinct was,

0:35

I don't know if I trust Peter to talk

0:38

about corporate pride. I don't know if

0:40

I want, I don't know if I need the straights

0:43

weighing in. You handle the pride,

0:45

I'll handle the corporate.

0:46

And then I realized that this is how members

0:49

of other groups feel when we cover

0:52

issues. This is how women

0:54

feel when we talk about the love languages

0:57

on the show. They're like, I don't know about

0:59

Mike and Peter. Thank you for giving

1:01

me a window of empathy this week,

1:03

Peter. That's when you realized that

1:05

you were wrong. Because we can

1:07

speak for women. We can. And I can

1:09

speak for all LGBT people. Exactly.

1:12

Just summarize this debate for us, Peter.

1:14

I plan to just sit quietly

1:16

and let you talk and just wait for you to fuck up. Everybody

1:19

listen up. Yeah, exactly. A

1:21

straight man is talking.

1:24

So tell us about the genesis of

1:26

this episode, Peter. Why did you want to cover this? Well,

1:30

I was bearing witness to

1:33

some of the backlash against

1:35

Bud Light. Your truth. You were

1:38

living your truth. And it sort

1:40

of struck my brain

1:42

that it was more transparent

1:45

than what we've seen in the past. In

1:48

the sense that there was almost no

1:51

veneer of like a reasonable

1:53

position. Yeah. The

1:55

entire display

1:57

was the result of conservatives saying.

2:00

hey, we hate trans people.

2:03

And then corporations reacting

2:05

to that with something like

2:08

sympathy. I thought that

2:10

was unique. It felt like an evolution

2:14

of the sort of conservative backlash we've

2:16

seen. And I thought it was an evolution,

2:19

maybe worth talking about, given that

2:21

it is taking place in the context of

2:23

like a wave of anti-trans

2:26

legislation across the country, for example. And

2:28

also the way that this has spilled

2:30

over into the broader like LGB

2:33

community, right? Like it started out as like explicitly

2:36

anti-trans

2:36

and a lot of people were warning

2:39

about like, they're gonna come for same sex marriage next. They're

2:41

gonna come for like other groups, right? And

2:44

the response you got was like, I don't know. You know, there's

2:46

a real tricky debate about like youth

2:48

sports and these surgeries. They're doing on

2:50

kids, blah,

2:50

blah, blah. And then now this stuff, like

2:53

they're freaking out about like greeting cards for

2:55

same sex couples. And it's just like, oh,

2:57

okay, they're just freaking out about like the existence of gay people

2:59

now. Right, well, I also think that an element

3:01

of this is that part of

3:04

like the conservative

3:06

political strategy right now is

3:08

to just be deeply unpleasant

3:12

in public spaces, like school

3:14

board meetings, right? Yeah, that's wild. They

3:17

turn them into completely insane spectacle

3:20

that no one else wants to be a part of.

3:22

Everyone else leaves and they assume

3:25

positions of power within school boards.

3:27

This feels like a similar sort of thing. They

3:30

are making themselves so obnoxious

3:33

in public

3:34

that companies are put into

3:36

a weird position, right? Where it's like, well,

3:39

I don't wanna give in to these people necessarily,

3:41

but dealing with them is so bad that

3:44

maybe we should.

3:45

So why don't you walk us through the Bud

3:47

Light explosion? I feel like this was kind of the

3:49

beginning of it this year and then I'll talk us

3:51

through Target. Yeah, before

3:54

we talk about the incident

3:57

from April,

3:58

we need to get to know...

3:59

Dylan Mulvaney,

4:02

a 26-year-old trans influencer.

4:04

She used to be a Broadway performer. She

4:06

was in Book of Mormon for a bit. She

4:09

is huge on TikTok. Right

4:11

now, she has something like 10 million

4:13

followers on TikTok, over a million

4:16

on Instagram. I had no idea she was that famous.

4:18

Almost all of her current popularity

4:20

came within the last year or so.

4:23

She came out as a trans woman and posted

4:26

a tongue-in-cheek clip titled

4:28

Day One of Being a Girl.

4:29

It gets popular. She

4:32

expands it into a series that chronicles

4:35

her transition. A lot of jokes,

4:37

a lot of serious commentary.

4:40

And by the end of 2022, she is obscenely popular, just

4:45

sort of skyrockets to social media

4:47

fame. In October, there

4:49

is a presidential forum where various prominent

4:52

figures on social media talk

4:54

to Joe Biden. Dylan spoke with

4:56

him about trans rights for a few minutes. This

4:59

puts her

4:59

on the right-wing radar. Yeah, of course.

5:02

Right-wing pundits and politicians, including

5:05

Senator Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee,

5:08

respond with their standard round

5:10

of right-wing vitriol. Some of it

5:12

is directed at Biden's comments, which were

5:15

just accepting that trans people

5:17

are real, basically, and saying they deserve rights.

5:20

But then they start digging through Dylan's

5:22

TikToks and mocking them. There's a video

5:25

where Dylan talks about having a potentially

5:27

visible penis as a trans woman. Senator

5:29

Blackburn does a tweet saying,

5:32

left-wing lunatics want to make this absurdity

5:34

normal. Oh my God. Marjorie Taylor

5:36

Greene weighs in. Lots of vile

5:39

shit is being said. And then, you know, they get

5:41

distracted by the next shiny object and

5:43

move on. I love how, like, the right-wing panics

5:45

are

5:45

always about, like, some random sophomore

5:48

at Oberlin said something arguably

5:51

over the top about a sandwich. And this is, like, two

5:53

sitting congressmen.

5:55

Right. It's not just that. It's, like, the entire

5:57

fucking media apparatus, right? Oh, yeah. a

6:00

clear line between

6:03

like the lowest, most

6:05

vile right-wing

6:07

social media types and then Tucker Carlson

6:10

and Ted Cruz and whoever, right? Yeah, that's wild.

6:12

So as influencers are want to

6:14

do, Dylan is also doing like promotional

6:17

sponsorships with various brands. So

6:19

in March, she posts this

6:22

on Instagram Reels. I'll

6:24

send it to you. Since deleted, but

6:27

I managed to find what I think is not

6:29

a homophobic YouTube channel that has it.

6:31

Nice. I've

6:34

never actually seen it. Well, it is harrowing.

6:37

Race

6:37

yourself.

6:40

Hi, impressive carrying skills,

6:42

right? I got some Budlights for us.

6:45

So I kept hearing about this thing called

6:47

March Madness. And I thought we were

6:49

all just having a hectic month, but it

6:51

turns

6:51

out it has something to do with sports.

6:54

And I'm not sure exactly which sport,

6:56

but either way, it's a cause to celebrate.

6:59

This month, I celebrated my day 365 of

7:02

womanhood, and Budlights sent me possibly

7:04

the best gift ever, a can

7:06

with my face on it. Check out my Instagram

7:09

story to see how you can enjoy March Madness

7:11

with Budlight and maybe win some money

7:13

too. Love

7:14

ya. Now,

7:17

I imagine that you need a moment

7:19

to compose yourself after watching

7:22

this clear symbol of the downfall of

7:24

Western civilization. God, it's so bleak

7:27

how these like huge blowups

7:29

come from just the most boring

7:30

random shit.

7:33

It's like, I'm getting a dumb

7:35

hashtag sponsored deal. Right. There's

7:37

no reason to notice this kind of thing, unless

7:40

right wingers just decide to freak out about

7:42

it. So let's be clear before we

7:44

move on about what this is, because part

7:46

of what fueled the right wing reaction

7:48

was misinformation around

7:50

the situation. Yeah, of course. According

7:52

to Anheuser-Busch, the scope

7:54

of this partnership was exactly

7:56

one post. This was not a TV commercial.

7:59

Budlight was

7:59

was just paying to get Dylan to do some

8:02

quick promotion on social

8:04

media. She

8:06

receives this can with her face on

8:08

it that can's not for sale anywhere.

8:11

It's like a commemorative thing that they sent her. Yeah, it was

8:13

a thing that they sent her. They have sent it to other

8:15

sponsorship partners. They sent it to her

8:17

for being a partner. And because she was celebrating

8:20

one

8:20

year officially out as a woman.

8:23

This is like one level above

8:25

those people that'll have like soccer mom

8:27

tripped at Disney World 2017 like

8:30

printed

8:30

on t-shirts. Yeah, right. And they wear

8:32

the t-shirts, but the t-shirts are not being sold

8:34

anywhere. They screen printed her

8:36

image on a can and send it to her basically. These

8:39

companies just have like, I think they cast

8:41

the net very wide for these kind of

8:43

influencers sponsorships. There's like

8:45

everybody. Like they probably have Christian influencers. They

8:47

probably did this too. It's not particularly ideological

8:50

these things. No, no, no. Everybody with more than like 100,000

8:52

followers send them some free shit and

8:54

give them $1,000. Part of the initial

8:56

Bud Light response

8:59

was to be like we do

9:01

hundreds of these partnerships. So

9:04

some right winger somewhere presumably is

9:06

scrolling through her Insta and they

9:08

freak out. Ben Shapiro

9:11

says, quote, well, folks, our

9:13

culture has now decided

9:15

men are women and women are men. And

9:17

you must be forced to consume products. Let's say so.

9:20

Forced to consume products is

9:22

a fascinating phrase. That's right. It's

9:25

mandatory. $3 will

9:27

be removed from your paycheck every week and a

9:29

beer will be sent to your house. And then you get

9:32

waterboarded with trans Bud Light. Kid

9:35

Rock posts a video of him shooting

9:37

a case of Bud Light with an AR-15. Of

9:40

course. Right wing politicians and

9:42

celebrities and pundits all

9:45

get

9:45

in on it. Fox News is talking about

9:47

it. Budweiser factories are

9:49

receiving bomb threats. They

9:52

call for a boycott. Boycott commences.

9:54

Sales drop for Budweiser

9:57

and Bud Light in early April.

10:00

mid April the CEO of

10:02

Anheuser-Busch puts out a statement

10:04

titled our responsibility to

10:07

America. Jesus Christ.

10:09

It is maybe the worst statement I have

10:11

ever read. Hell yeah. Not

10:14

just because it is completely

10:16

morally and substantively hollow,

10:18

but because it might as well be designed

10:21

to just piss everyone off. Yeah, because

10:23

if you throw a trans person under the

10:25

bus, you then get the backlash from

10:28

progressives. So what they're trying to do is

10:30

thread the needle between, we don't

10:32

want to piss off the right wing psychos, but we

10:34

also don't want to piss off the 90% of the country

10:38

that really has no problem with this. Right.

10:40

It includes the choice line, quote,

10:43

we never intended to be part of a discussion

10:45

that divides people. Oh my God. We are in

10:47

the business of bringing people together over

10:49

a beer. The rest of the statement

10:52

is just like mealy-mouthed bullshit. At

10:54

one point, they referenced American

10:56

values, and they talk about freedom and hard

10:58

work. Yeah, just throw a bald eagle in there.

11:01

The bald eagle screech is like playing

11:03

in the background. I mean, the direct

11:05

parallel is just like, what if an ad had

11:07

a black person? Yeah, exactly. And then the right wing

11:10

freaked out, and Anheuser-Busch was like,

11:12

look, we don't want to be

11:13

part of a conversation that divides people. We're trying

11:15

to stay out of all these politics. From now on,

11:17

it's whites only. This is what we

11:19

talked about before we recorded, of

11:21

how difficult it is to talk about this, because it's

11:24

so just one-dimensionally bigoted,

11:26

like the actual backlash. Like

11:28

there's no laundered version

11:31

of this argument that is like, well,

11:33

if you look at it this way, it's actually like they raised some good

11:35

points. It's literally just like a trans

11:37

person was visible. The

11:40

only sort

11:40

of like angle here that they have

11:43

is that she has done some

11:45

activism, right? Like the

11:47

fact that she's talked to Joe Biden is sometimes

11:50

referenced, but like really, she's

11:52

just a trans influencer. Yeah, she's just a

11:54

famous trans person. Now, what's interesting

11:56

about this boycott is that usually

11:58

boycotts lose.

11:59

energy very quickly. Yeah. You know,

12:02

remember like the Carig

12:03

boycott from a few years ago, or like the

12:05

Goya boycott of 2020? Barely.

12:08

Yeah. These things come and go. There is

12:11

research showing that boycotts just tend

12:13

not to work. The boycotters lose

12:15

energy and focus. Often the

12:18

publicity creates brand awareness that

12:20

like counteracts any decline in sales.

12:22

Yeah. This one appears to be

12:25

different. For nearly two months now,

12:27

Bud Light and Budweiser sales have fallen

12:29

relative to the previous year's sales. And

12:32

the decline has mostly

12:33

increased over time.

12:36

Now hovering around 25% for

12:39

Bud Light in particular, which is a massive

12:41

decrease obviously. Yeah. I don't

12:43

think we really know why

12:45

this boycott has been

12:47

much more effective than the usual boycott.

12:50

I would imagine that you can chalk it up to

12:52

a couple of things.

12:53

First of all, Bud Light is essentially

12:56

a commodity. It is cheap swill,

12:58

meaning it's very easily replaced

13:00

by competitors like Miller and Coors.

13:03

And in fact, some preliminary sales data

13:05

seems to show that that's where the sales went,

13:08

right? For the 25% decrease in

13:10

Bud Light, there was a corresponding

13:12

increase across the other two brands. Yeah, they're

13:14

in the rack next to each other. You're like, fuck it. I've been

13:16

hearing that Bud Light is woke. I'm just going to pick the

13:18

other beer. Right. It's the easiest boycott

13:20

in the world to stick with. And then also

13:22

there was like a very

13:23

intentional campaign by prominent

13:26

right-wingers to sustain the outrage.

13:29

With the conscious knowledge

13:32

that the right

13:33

is generally outnumbered, but

13:36

they could get what they want in the market by sort

13:38

of aggressively targeting individual companies.

13:41

Yeah. This is something that Matt Walsh has talked

13:43

about for a while. They don't always admit

13:45

that they are sort of in the minority, right? Because

13:47

the whole silent majority concept

13:49

has been part of their psyche for so long. But

13:52

essentially conceding, look, we

13:54

are not the majority in this country,

13:57

but we are large enough that if

13:59

we just... coordinate and focus

14:01

our effort,

14:02

we can bully the marketplace.

14:05

By being the more obnoxious

14:07

side, by being the more organized side.

14:09

Yeah, I highlighted that quote too, where he said, we can't

14:12

boycott every woke company,

14:14

but we can highlight one and

14:16

make a big example out of them. Right.

14:20

And they've essentially, by zeroing in on this one company,

14:22

every other consumer brand is looking

14:24

at this being like, oh fuck, we don't want to be next. Right.

14:27

Which puts two marketing executives

14:30

responsible for the promotion on leave.

14:32

One of them is Alyssa Heinershied,

14:35

who was hired, I think in 2022, just

14:37

to freshen up the

14:39

brand. Right-wingers locate a

14:42

podcast interview with her from March

14:44

where she said she was hired with a mandate to

14:46

evolve the brand and that she wanted to

14:48

bring an

14:49

image of inclusivity

14:51

to what she called a traditionally

14:54

fratty and kind of out of

14:56

touch brand. Oh no, this poor woman.

14:59

Now I want to talk about the sort of like business

15:01

angle here. Bud Light and its

15:03

peers are a shrinking portion

15:06

of the alcohol market. Right. For

15:08

the past like 20 years, we've seen the

15:11

rise of like craft beer.

15:13

Last few years, we've seen hard seltzer take

15:15

a massive share of the market. So

15:18

if you're sitting on

15:20

Bud Light,

15:21

a brand pivot is a very natural

15:23

move, right? It makes total sense.

15:26

You need to sort of redirect your energy because

15:29

you are shrinking. On the

15:31

other hand, the plurality of

15:33

your customers are probably

15:35

white, male, middle-aged.

15:39

The brand has always been marketed to them. And

15:41

so this becomes sort of like an affirmation of everything

15:43

they feared when they saw the Dylan Mulvaney

15:46

promo, right? The culture

15:48

is slipping out of their hands. And these are

15:50

people that are still very upset by the black

15:53

elves that they had to move through

15:55

on their television screens. Very difficult for these

15:57

folks. Heinershied received some

15:59

weird.

15:59

targeted harassment, of course. Of course. People

16:02

dig up photos of her from her college

16:04

days where she's at parties.

16:07

And they're like, oh, so now you don't like

16:09

frat parties, huh? Jesus Christ.

16:12

That was on Fox News, dude. Yeah, the anti-fandom.

16:15

I was like, yeah, you got her. Yeah, wow. She's

16:17

now 39, by the way. So like, we're

16:19

doing this is like 20-year-old

16:21

fucking huge hypocrisy.

16:24

She attended frat parties

16:25

and then made an offhand comment about

16:28

fratiness 20 years later. I don't even know that

16:30

we know that they were frat parties, but I would have

16:32

met like, yeah, of course you went to frat parties. Yeah, I went to frat parties.

16:34

Frats are fucking stupid, but I also went to frat parties in

16:36

college. Because that's where the parties

16:38

are. Yeah, exactly. So

16:41

Dylan, for her part, drops off

16:43

of social media for a bit. She comes

16:45

back in late April with a quick

16:48

message where she says things like,

16:50

quote, what I'm struggling to understand is

16:52

the need to dehumanize and to be cruel.

16:55

I just don't think that's right, which is very

16:57

nice. And also sort of like borderline naive

16:59

in a nice way, like a pure soul. Yeah.

17:03

Dehumanizing is the whole point, Dylan. Yeah, it's

17:05

always so bleak when people just make

17:07

these like basic statements of humanity

17:10

of just like,

17:10

please don't try to murder me. I

17:14

don't know. There's a real debate to be had here. Yeah,

17:17

there's such a purity in the response where it was like,

17:20

I don't think everyone should be trying to kill me. I

17:22

don't know that I need to die. And the media is like, the

17:24

controversy swirls. Now,

17:27

again, the boycott has sort of continued. In

17:33

May, Ted Cruz and Marsha Blackburn

17:35

called for a probe into the sponsorship,

17:38

claiming that Dylan's audience

17:40

skews young. So they are like arguing

17:42

that this might be tantamount to marketing

17:45

alcohol to children. Oh my god.

17:47

They managed to like work in like a weird grooming

17:50

angle, right? And in general,

17:52

like

17:53

the right wing response at the ground level

17:55

has just been wild, like just

17:57

naked transphobia. A lot of people.

17:59

people commenting about Dylan's

18:02

affect, saying that she acts young

18:05

girlish and that's mocking women.

18:07

Oh my God. Which A, only

18:09

exists as a critique if you reject

18:11

the concept that she is a woman, but B

18:14

is misunderstanding what's happening here.

18:16

Dylan's annoying girlish

18:18

affect is because she's a theater kid. Yeah,

18:21

yeah, yeah, exactly. They don't get it. I mean, look, I

18:23

have been around theater kids for long enough that I immediately

18:26

clocked this. And then people were like, she's mocking

18:28

women. I was like, no, you don't get it. You

18:31

don't get it. And you're going to have to watch a lot

18:33

of productions before you do. There's so much

18:35

to say about this stuff, about the hypocrisy of quote

18:38

unquote free market conservatives

18:40

losing their minds because

18:42

the free market is working as intended. Companies

18:45

are trying to appeal to new audiences

18:46

or the hypocrisy of the people

18:49

that melted down about cancel culture for

18:51

fucking years and are now very

18:53

obviously engaging in an effort

18:56

to cancel a person and a company.

18:58

But it's like, it's just so

18:59

fucking obvious. It's so obvious to make

19:01

these points that it's like, it's boring to listen to. Yeah,

19:04

what we were talking about earlier is sort of my takeaway, the

19:06

fact that like, there is really nothing more

19:08

to the outrage than the fact that

19:11

Dylan is trans, right? There's no nuance beyond

19:13

that. The right just wants the takeaway

19:15

to be, don't do business with

19:18

trans people. And it's so nakedly

19:21

built upon unfiltered discrimination

19:24

that it feels like surreal to witness

19:26

the media coverage because

19:28

the media keeps referring to like

19:31

a controversy without really

19:33

spelling out that the entire

19:35

controversy is that Bud Light partnered

19:38

with a trans person and these people

19:40

hate trans people. Especially true

19:42

by the way, because a lot of the coverage comes from

19:44

financial media because this is like a business

19:47

story to a degree. So like

19:50

just to give you the tiniest slice,

19:51

Yahoo Finance's latest story

19:54

said quote, driven by backlash

19:56

from an advertising campaign with transgender

19:58

influencer, Dylan Mulvaney. Bud

20:00

Light sales have now declined for six

20:02

weeks. Now, if you are in

20:04

the business media, that is presumably

20:07

the full story, right? There's a

20:09

New York Times article about one of these meta

20:11

articles about like what's going on at Target and Bud Light

20:13

and stuff.

20:14

And the headline is, Brands

20:16

Embracing Pride Month Confront a Volatile

20:18

Political Climate. Jesus. It's

20:21

not a climate. It's

20:21

almost like if you're a journalist covering this, you

20:24

have two choices. One is you just like use

20:26

this neutral terminology, or two

20:29

is like you really dig in. Yeah, yeah,

20:31

yeah, yeah. And I think a lot of them are

20:33

probably just like, oof, I'm not gonna deal

20:35

with this, right? I'm not gonna try to write

20:38

the article that explains what's happening

20:40

here because it's too much. And that

20:42

sort of like

20:43

willingness to go along

20:46

with it is a huge

20:48

problem in a society

20:51

where fascists are ascendant. Again,

20:53

if this were just the right being like,

20:56

hey, let's get mad they did a partnership

20:58

with a black person.

21:00

I would think that people within the

21:02

media would be a little more

21:05

primed to call it what it

21:07

is. Maybe that's me being naive,

21:10

but it feels like the

21:13

media's response to this and their willingness

21:15

to describe it in neutral terms

21:18

is an indicator that they

21:20

are not ready to defend

21:23

trans rights, period.

21:26

I think the problem is that the

21:28

reality, if you describe

21:30

it in sober terms, sounds partisan.

21:33

Sounds correct. Yeah. If you describe

21:35

like we are now in like year three of

21:37

a wave of essentially terrorist

21:40

actions and like local agitating against

21:43

progressive change, right? This, I think it really

21:45

started with the anti-vaxxers, but we've had

21:47

people taking over school boards.

21:50

I mean, we had a fucking anti-queer

21:52

fucking mass shooting. We

21:54

had the Buffalo shooting, all of these pictures like straightforwardly,

21:57

white supremacist. We've had other mass shootings

21:59

that were like...

21:59

explicitly white supremacists.

22:02

We've had all kinds of other threats against

22:04

black colleges. We've had these children's

22:07

gender clinics being shut down sometimes

22:09

for days on end because the threats are so overwhelming.

22:12

If you describe this as part of, like,

22:14

oh, yeah, right wing violence

22:17

and threats and intimidation are really

22:19

ascendant in this country, and this is a major

22:22

thuddingly obvious trend.

22:24

It sounds bad, but it's just

22:26

objectively the majority.

22:29

I read an ADL report that

22:32

pointed out that every extremist

22:34

act of murder in 2022 was

22:36

right wing terror.

22:38

There's various other reports,

22:41

like there's one from the New America Foundation that tracks

22:43

every single incident of terrorist

22:45

violence since 9-11, and

22:48

one death is attributed to the far left, and 150

22:50

deaths are attributed to far right violence.

22:53

I mentioned their

22:56

strategy of being

22:58

intolerable to be around. Part

23:01

of that, though, is that sort of

23:03

implication that

23:05

there is a willingness

23:08

to engage in extreme

23:10

violence among a decent

23:13

chunk of these people. When they go and start

23:15

knocking over pride displays

23:17

at Target, the Target worker

23:20

doesn't know whether they're dealing

23:22

with the 99 percent of them that

23:25

are just ready to knock over a pride display

23:27

or the 1 percent that's ready to pull out a gun and shoot

23:29

you if you try to stop them. Totally.

23:31

Should we talk about Target? I did

23:33

a lot of like social media

23:35

sleuthing. Let's talk about Target.

23:38

So in early May, Target

23:41

announces its 2023

23:43

pride collection. The only media

23:45

I could find about the actual announcement

23:48

and like when

23:48

they started putting this on shelves was

23:50

from left wing gay media

23:52

making fun of it because like

23:55

ultimately it's Target. So one of the things

23:57

they're selling is a T-shirt that

23:59

says

23:59

live, laugh, lesbian. And

24:02

people are like, target, what are you doing?

24:05

Good lord. There's

24:06

a coffee mug that says gender

24:08

fluid. There's a candle that is allegedly

24:11

pronoun-centered.

24:12

I don't know what that means. This is unnecessary

24:15

because candles are already

24:18

gay.

24:18

Exactly. We don't need you

24:21

to go this far. We got it already, guys. Vanilla

24:24

wasn't enough? Exactly. So

24:27

for the first two weeks of May, this just sits

24:29

there. It sits there on the internet.

24:32

It sits there in stores. The earliest

24:35

viral post that I could see

24:37

about this was from this account called fucking

24:39

Gaze Against Groomers. Hell

24:41

yeah. Have you heard of these ghouls? Good luck, Gaze Against

24:43

Groomers. I'm sure they will never put you against

24:45

the wall. I'm

24:47

comforted by the fact that no matter how much

24:50

these fucking people hate themselves, I hate them

24:52

more. This

24:54

account is the first one I saw where they basically

24:56

amplify these videos that I believe

24:59

had been bouncing around for a while at that point where essentially

25:01

random

25:02

people go into

25:04

Target and are like, look at this. Look

25:07

at what they're selling to your kids. It's like

25:09

someone who's sort of cosplaying

25:11

as a concerned parent or someone who's like,

25:13

I'm just worried about indoctrination or whatever. They

25:16

post a couple of these videos and

25:20

there's a couple of like blips in right

25:22

wing media. So on May 11th, there's a Daily Wire

25:24

story called Target releases latest Pride

25:27

collection complete with kids books and

25:29

rainbow items for babies. What

25:31

is very interesting about like the sort of following two

25:33

weeks,

25:34

and I think this has kind of been memory hold like when

25:36

this goes public, but the

25:39

early days of this

25:41

freak out are like very straightforwardly

25:43

a satanic panic. Most

25:46

of these videos were random people walk

25:48

into Target stores and like lose their minds

25:51

are based around the fact that they're allegedly

25:53

selling satanic merchandise.

25:55

Right. Right. So I don't

25:58

know if you came across this, but I'm going to send you. a

26:00

article from the National Review,

26:03

far right laundromat, the National Review. Slash

26:06

the most prominent rag in all

26:08

of conservatism. Exactly, like the respectable

26:11

conservatives. Okay. Right?

26:16

Oh, fuck yeah, dude. Okay. It's so

26:18

good. So

26:18

read the headline in the first couple of paragraphs.

26:20

The headline is Target Partners

26:23

with Satanist Brand to Create Items

26:25

for Pride Collection.

26:27

Satanist Brand. A

26:29

real thing. A real thing that exists. Why

26:32

are there so many fucking pop-up ads

26:34

on National Review? It's like something about

26:36

conservatism.

26:37

They can't help themselves. It's like

26:40

NFTs and like buying gold and like it's

26:42

like really low rent ads

26:44

too. And it's the ones that like move across your

26:46

screen so they try to trick you when you're trying to hit

26:48

the X into hitting the fucking ad

26:51

itself. I know. God, all

26:53

right. Target has contracted with

26:55

Abpralin,

26:56

a clothing brand that sells Satanist merchandise,

27:00

some of which glorifies violence, to create

27:02

products for its pride collection. While

27:04

Target does not sell Abpralin Satanist

27:06

inspired products, the retail giant

27:09

approached Abpralin less than a year ago to

27:11

design pride-related merchandise according

27:13

to the brand's social media post. At

27:16

one point, Target sold three Abpralin

27:18

items.

27:19

A messenger bag saying, we belong

27:21

everywhere across trans flag colors.

27:24

A tote bag with a message too queer

27:26

for here, beneath a UFO. And

27:29

a cure transphobia, not

27:31

trans people sweatshirt.

27:33

Only the sweatshirt remains for sale.

27:35

It's unclear why the other two items no

27:37

longer appear on the Target website. Rich

27:40

texts. The lurking mystery is

27:43

what exactly the

27:44

affiliation between this brand and Satanism

27:47

actually is because it's not entirely clear.

27:50

Of course, the products that they actually sell

27:53

from this brand are relatively

27:55

harmless.

27:56

I feel like the most masterpiece clause

27:58

in this thing is, While Target does

28:00

not sell Abtullen Satanist

28:02

inspired products, comma, right?

28:05

They're not selling them. Conservatives can't accept that

28:08

like corporate pride is pink

28:10

washing bullshit to sell merchandise, right?

28:13

They believe that it is materially

28:16

important. And because that

28:18

is such an obvious fiction, they

28:20

have to sort of craft a narrative where

28:23

the corporations

28:25

are sort of like Illuminati-esque

28:27

figures. Yeah. They are right

28:29

before our eyes, shaking

28:32

hands with people who worship Satan

28:34

and eat babies.

28:35

That exact dynamic also

28:37

applies to their conception

28:39

of Satanism. The entire reason

28:41

they're mad about this is that this brand Abtullen,

28:44

which is basically just one dude named Eric in the UK,

28:46

this like trans guy who's a designer, he also

28:49

sells pins that say

28:51

Satan respects pronouns.

28:52

So it's just tongue in cheek bullshit.

28:55

It's very obviously a fucking joke. It's

28:57

like a satire of what the church lady

29:00

would say. Right. It's like,

29:02

did you know Satan respects pronouns? One of the things that drives me

29:04

the most fucking bananas about conservative

29:07

Christians is that they don't understand that

29:09

Satan is a Christian deity. To

29:12

believe in Satan, you have to think the Bible

29:14

is true. People who reject

29:16

Christianity are atheists. They're

29:19

not Satanists. It doesn't make sense to believe

29:21

in the Bible, but then side with the bad guy.

29:23

I can't remember

29:24

if it was like a Twitter post or Tumblr

29:26

post or something like that, but there was once a post

29:28

somewhere that was like,

29:30

the Bible is just God's side of the story. Like

29:33

I want to hear what Satan has to say. That's

29:35

the both sides of them we need. It's true. The

29:37

sort of like aggressively evangelical

29:40

types have always been super easy

29:42

to troll with this sort of shit because

29:45

they cannot comprehend

29:48

or don't care to differentiate between

29:52

a person who is trolling and says

29:54

they like Satan and someone

29:56

who is actually a Satan worshipper. Yeah. To

29:59

them, it doesn't matter whether.

29:59

whether you are a trans guy

30:02

named Eric creating a joke pin

30:05

or the witches in

30:07

The Witch huddled nude around a campfire

30:09

floating in the air through the power

30:11

of Satan. That is the same thing to them.

30:14

It's also very funny to me that they're pretending

30:15

that they don't agree with

30:18

the phrase Satan respects pronouns.

30:21

You guys hate respecting pronouns. The

30:23

fact that Satan would be a pronoun guy

30:25

kind of makes sense. The

30:28

right wing media kicks into gear around this. Tom

30:31

Cotton tweets out a photo

30:34

of the Satan respects pronouns pin

30:36

with something along the lines of like,

30:39

Target is indoctrinating our youth, blah, blah,

30:41

blah. Of course, this all gets warped

30:44

together with this idea that

30:46

Target is actually selling the Satan

30:48

respects pronouns pin. To be honest,

30:50

I would not give a shit if Target was selling that pin, but

30:53

it's a very deliberate

30:54

effort on the part of right wing media. It's

30:56

also Target would not sell that pin.

30:59

No, of course not. They need something

31:01

more than just, look, they're

31:03

supporting gay people. But the goal

31:05

of this effort

31:07

is to imply that

31:08

all of this is part of a

31:11

top down effort by liberal

31:13

elites

31:14

to corrupt our children, to groom

31:17

our children. That a pride display

31:19

at Target

31:20

is two degrees of separation

31:22

away from pedophilia.

31:23

And you can also see the QAnonification

31:26

of conservatism in this too, where it's like,

31:28

they're kind of trying to imply that somehow

31:31

by buying like a cute t-shirt

31:33

for a kid that's like, too queer for here with

31:35

a UFO on it,

31:37

that somehow like, no, no, no, that's not just a cute t-shirt.

31:40

It's actually like low key Satanist.

31:42

They also do this extremely try hard thing

31:45

where they try to link

31:47

this merchandise to like glorifying

31:49

violence.

31:50

So later in the national review post,

31:52

they say the company, they're talking

31:54

about this allegedly satanic company, the

31:56

company sells clothing designs showing the

31:58

phrases we bash

31:59

back with a heart shaped mace in the

32:02

trans flag colors, transphobe

32:04

collector with a skull and homophobe

32:06

headrest with skulls beside a pastel

32:09

guillotine.

32:09

Absolutely based. And it's

32:11

like they're obviously jokes. The we bash back

32:14

thing is like a very well known

32:16

slogan from people who used

32:18

to go around neighborhoods looking

32:20

for gay bashers and like protecting gay

32:23

people. They would like walk around with baseball bats.

32:25

And this is like an actual like thing of like you're going to

32:27

gay bash us, we're going to fucking gay bash bash you.

32:29

So like that's just like a throwback

32:31

like actual thing. Yeah, also it's cool. I

32:33

know. I mean, it's also really cool. But it's also

32:36

very funny to be when conservatives are like this glorifies

32:38

a culture of violence. It's a culture of self

32:41

defense against you, you fucking freaks.

32:43

Exactly. You guys are the ones glorifying fucking

32:45

violence constantly. And like there's already

32:48

been like a wave of death threats

32:50

about

32:50

this shit. Like who's glorifying violence

32:52

here? There are tons of like tongue

32:55

in cheek

32:56

death threats and threats of violence and like lefty

32:58

social media. And if

33:00

you look at right wing social media, it's

33:03

not tongue in cheek. You

33:05

know, I actually have like complaints

33:08

about how lefties handle

33:10

death threats and stuff, because I do think it's funny

33:13

to joke about like

33:14

Henry Kissinger dying. I feel

33:16

like the most magical times on the internet

33:19

in the last like five years were the weekend

33:21

when Pokemon Go came out and the night

33:24

that Trump announced he had COVID. Dude, that

33:26

night. Ding dong like

33:29

ring the bells. I

33:31

think I once tweeted that that night on

33:34

Twitter was like

33:35

the closest we got to all like being in

33:37

a stadium together doing the seven nation

33:40

army chant. I remember

33:42

texting my family the next

33:45

day and my family are not a bunch of like

33:47

irony poisoned lefties like me. They're

33:49

just normal liberals. And I was like, did

33:51

you hear the good news? And they were like, we heard

33:54

the great news. Like

33:56

Xanadu, it's possible we can't have a

33:58

better world. Everyone was.

33:59

I don't know.

34:02

I'm not someone who defends the use of like

34:05

jokes about violence as anything

34:07

other than Catharsis, which I think

34:09

is what it is and and why

34:12

people use it.

34:13

And also like whatever people are gonna joke around

34:16

about this kind of stuff. Yeah. I have no

34:18

problem like making some jokes and like tittering

34:21

when other people joke about like Donald Trump

34:23

dying of Covid

34:23

but also like if somebody were to assassinate

34:26

a political leader on the right. I would also be

34:28

able to be like, oh, I don't know that this is like a great

34:31

direction. Which political leader though?

34:34

But so I really think that it's important

34:37

to note that this whole Target freakout

34:40

began as like psychos

34:42

saying psycho shit about Satanism.

34:45

Very

34:45

Bush jr. era. Yeah. Conservative

34:47

grassroots shit. And then eventually,

34:49

of course, they add this thing

34:52

about like indoctrinating kids. So they find out that

34:54

Target is selling some like pride related swimsuits

34:58

for girls. But then elsewhere

35:00

in the store, Target also sells

35:02

swimsuits that have quote tuck

35:05

friendly construction. Okay, did you follow

35:07

this?

35:07

I like caught this out of the corner of my eye and

35:09

was like, no, I'm not engaging. You know, you get a product

35:12

on the shelf. You know, they have like a little brochure

35:14

that's like attached to it. Yeah, yeah. Oh, it

35:16

wicks away moisture and it's like 70% polyester.

35:20

It does some kind of like extra marketing stuff.

35:23

One of the things that is sometimes included

35:25

in these little marketing pamphlets that are included

35:27

in clothing now is like it's tuck friendly

35:30

construction. Which means it has a little bit of extra

35:32

fabric in the crotch so that if you're a trans

35:34

woman who has a penis, it like makes it a little

35:35

bit easier for you to tuck down there. These

35:38

swimsuits are not sold to children. This

35:40

is not like a major component of the marketing. I

35:42

actually searched on their website. You can like barely find

35:44

this sort of advertised or prominently

35:46

displayed. It just like here's a little extra piece

35:48

of information in the same way like hey, don't dry this

35:50

on high. Yeah, like it's like an extra little piece

35:53

of marketing, right? Right. And so

35:55

because conservatives are all just like melting down

35:57

about like things existing, they then I

36:00

don't intend that these tuck-friendly

36:02

swimsuits are being sold to children. Which

36:05

honestly, even if that was true, I don't know that I would

36:07

give a shit, like whatever. I don't know, tags

36:09

on clothes say all kinds of things and like some kids

36:11

are trans, like whatever. I don't, I don't,

36:13

it's really not that big of a deal. But of course it's like

36:16

they can't respond to the world as it

36:18

is, right? Everything needs

36:19

to be this like heightened version of it. Right?

36:22

So it's like, well, they're selling trans swimsuits

36:24

to kids. Right. And there's all these

36:26

videos, including one from the Heritage Foundation,

36:29

another sort of quote unquote, respectable conservative

36:31

institution, where people go in

36:33

and there's very sort of deliberate

36:35

editing that goes on to make it

36:38

look like these little tags

36:40

on the swimsuits are on the kids swimsuits.

36:42

Uh-huh, interesting. So they sort of cut away

36:45

from the kids swimsuits to like a closeup

36:47

of her hands. And she's like, now this has tuck-friendly

36:49

construction. Right. And you're like, right,

36:51

but that's, you're in a different part

36:52

of the store. What if a kid is eight

36:55

lines deep on the tag of

36:57

this adult mating suit? And

36:59

they see this.

37:00

They never say this outright,

37:03

but I feel like it's very similar

37:05

to when I was like a

37:07

really little kid, I would go into my

37:09

parents' bathroom for whatever, and I

37:11

would see my mom's like multi-vitamins

37:14

for women. And like in my

37:16

little kid brain, I would be

37:18

like, oh, if I took

37:20

those, they would like turn me into

37:22

a woman. Like that's, that's how I understood

37:25

those pills, even though it's just like, you know, vitamin C

37:27

and like riboflavin or whatever. And

37:30

I feel like it's telling that they never really describe

37:32

like the mechanism by which

37:35

this is harmful to kids. It's like a little

37:37

bit of extra cloth in the crotch. And

37:40

like, I think that they

37:42

think that this will

37:44

like turn your kid trans if

37:47

they wear this swimsuit. Like

37:49

I don't actually know what

37:50

they're mad about. There's a weird part

37:53

of the conservative like anti-trans,

37:55

anti-LGBT movement

37:58

that is like basically It's basically

38:01

predicated around loose associations

38:04

in your mind between children

38:06

and sexuality and genitalia

38:09

and creating a sense

38:12

that

38:12

these things are intermingling more

38:15

than they should. But without any

38:17

real coherence, because

38:19

if you're a child at Target,

38:22

they sell adult underwear.

38:25

And if you're wandering over to the adult section,

38:27

you can see a lady in a bra. You

38:30

can see a guy in briefs. Being

38:32

loosely present in the world, you will see

38:35

this stuff. No one cares. But

38:37

if you threw a fucking rainbow on that, they

38:39

would say it was grooming. It's also very

38:41

funny because rainbows are sold to children

38:44

in all kinds of contexts that aren't particularly

38:46

gay. Kids just like rainbows.

38:48

You can sell rainbows to kids, but there

38:50

needs to be text on it that says,

38:53

if it's a boy's shirt with a rainbow,

38:55

I will fuck girls when I grow up.

38:57

Live laugh heteronormative. You straight

38:59

child. That's

39:02

like conservative Target. Little

39:05

shirts for toddler boys that

39:07

are like, I like pussy. Penetrative sex

39:10

with a vagina. But then, okay, I don't know if you saw

39:12

this with the Bud Light stuff, but

39:14

there's a fascinating wave in

39:17

conservative media. So the early reports

39:20

are just like Target is selling Pride merch, da

39:22

da da.

39:22

The first one I found

39:25

was May 23rd in Fox. The

39:27

framing is like pretending to be meta.

39:29

It'll be like Target faces backlash

39:31

over Pride collection. You

39:33

guys did the backlash. The

39:36

Daily Wire, which is the earliest

39:38

article that I could find, being like, look at what's in their

39:40

Pride collection, then has an article two

39:42

weeks later that is like, Target really

39:45

riled up conservatives with its Pride

39:46

collection. It's you. You did that,

39:48

and now you're reporting on the thing that you did.

39:51

So this Fox News article from May 23rd,

39:54

it's something we saw in the

39:56

GameStop

39:57

bonus episode that we did where it's all about how Target

39:59

is.

39:59

panicking. So the headline

40:02

is Target holds emergency

40:04

meeting over LGBTQ merchandise

40:07

in some stores to avoid Bud

40:09

Light situation. And they have

40:11

some sort of insider who works

40:13

at Target who says the executives are really concerned

40:16

about his backlash and they had a meeting

40:18

to

40:18

discuss their response. And that's

40:20

the whole story. It's like, yeah, Target has

40:23

noticed this and is trying to

40:25

come up with a response to this, which like, yes,

40:27

you know, it's a consumer

40:29

facing company. It's facing consumer backlash.

40:31

Like people are going to get on the phone and be like, what

40:33

should we do about this? One of the things

40:36

that neutral coverage about

40:38

this stuff does, especially in the business

40:41

media context, is

40:43

sort of imply if not outright

40:46

state that they have like made a business

40:48

misstep without explaining

40:51

what they mean, which is like,

40:53

yeah, marketing things to gay

40:55

people is a business mistake now.

40:57

Right. Partnering with a trans person

41:00

is a business mistake. They can't say that

41:02

shit out loud, but you can sort of gesture

41:04

to the situation and be like, yeah,

41:07

so obviously Target has made some

41:09

sort of error here because how else

41:11

can business media process corporate

41:13

controversy? How else can business media process

41:16

a sales decline? Something must have

41:18

gone wrong.

41:19

It's a way of talking about this just like,

41:21

again, straightforwardly bigoted and

41:23

deranged pushback as like somehow you're making

41:26

an objective statement. You're like, well, you know, there's

41:28

this backlash going on. We're not going to say

41:30

whether it has any merit or not. But of

41:32

course they throw in these little

41:34

things that are like very obviously meant

41:36

to like rile up the reader. So

41:39

the Fox News article, it's sort of giving

41:41

an overview of like, what's this controversy all

41:43

about? And it says, target pride

41:45

merchandise includes a female style swimsuits

41:47

that can be used to tuck male

41:49

genitalia. Some products are also

41:52

labeled as thoughtfully fit on multiple

41:54

body types and gender expressions. Pride

41:56

merchandise also

41:57

includes onesies and rompers for newborn

41:59

babies. A variety of adult clothing

42:01

with slogans such as super queer, hearty

42:03

supplies, home decor, multiple books,

42:06

and a grow at your own pace, saucer

42:08

platter. And it's like none of this stuff is bad,

42:11

but it's just describing it in these sort of like intonation

42:13

that's supposed to make you like, oh my

42:15

God, like rompers for babies. Babies

42:17

could wear anything as a romper and they're not gonna be affected by it because

42:20

babies can't read. There is like a

42:22

cottage industry that I've never really seen

42:24

any complaints about of like loosely

42:26

or even like

42:28

very offensive things

42:30

written on clothing for infants because

42:32

it's not for the infant. Yeah,

42:34

of course. Seeing something offensive written

42:36

across a baby is inherently funny, but

42:39

they have this sort of like express or implied

42:41

narrative

42:42

that like

42:44

this is being directed at children.

42:47

And then they list off 20 relatively

42:50

inoffensive things. And

42:53

in a vacuum, you would never think anything

42:55

of them if you're a normal functioning human being.

42:58

But when you read all

43:00

of them together, you're supposed to get the impression

43:02

that like something is going on here. There

43:05

is an effort to shift

43:07

the culture in some way or something like that.

43:10

And again,

43:10

it's basically just like marketing boilerplate.

43:12

Like they're selling clothes that say thoughtfully

43:15

fit on multiple body types and gender

43:17

expressions.

43:17

Oh, fuck no. Whoa,

43:20

like fat kids might have swimsuits. Oh

43:22

my God. Or like my kids experimenting

43:24

with their gender. Like what kind of swimsuit

43:26

should I get them? I'll get them like a relatively sort

43:28

of unisex one. No, every tag

43:31

should say fits beautifully on

43:33

a traditionally structured white body.

43:35

Exactly. Like thin white

43:38

children. Like, I don't know, maybe

43:40

you think that's like an annoying thing to have on

43:42

a tag, but also like these are mostly

43:44

just marketing efforts. Right, this is again, something

43:46

that gay people have complained

43:47

about every fucking pride month since

43:49

literally the day after Stonewall. It's

43:52

like, yeah, this is on some level cynical,

43:55

on some level earnest marketing

43:57

efforts to a group. Like people are more

43:59

concerned.

43:59

with sort of gender expression now, and

44:02

there's been much more talk of body positivity, et cetera,

44:04

in the last 10 years. And so companies

44:07

are marketing to that. Here's a product that sort

44:09

of matches your values. This is just normal

44:11

capitalism shit. Here's

44:12

the thing is, I've now been within

44:15

high-level HR circles of

44:17

corporations, and so I feel like I have

44:20

some vision into this. There

44:22

are, in

44:23

almost every corporation,

44:26

the true

44:27

believers in like DEI

44:29

and inclusivity in the product, et

44:32

cetera, et cetera. But everything

44:34

they do gets filtered through a sales

44:36

guy, someone

44:39

who is revenue focused.

44:41

And what that means at the end

44:43

of the day is

44:45

if our culture had gotten

44:47

more homophobic over the last 10

44:49

years, rather than drastically

44:52

less homophobic, corporations

44:54

wouldn't be doing this. If we had gotten

44:56

more fatphobic as a society,

44:59

there wouldn't be more options

45:02

for fat people in clothing sections.

45:04

It is plain as day.

45:05

I actually think that one aspect of this that

45:08

is maybe under-covered is the extent to which

45:10

a lot of this is done also for employee retention.

45:13

I know that in the 1990s, when

45:15

all the sweatshop boycotts of Nike were happening,

45:17

they never really affected sales, but

45:19

they affected Nike's ability to hire

45:22

and retain employees. If you're

45:24

trying to get a job in corporate America and one

45:26

company has a reputation for sweatshops

45:28

and the other doesn't, you're not gonna go work for the sweatshop

45:31

company. And so Nike kind of made

45:33

this big marketing effort and actually genuinely

45:36

worked on improving its working

45:37

conditions in Indonesia, mainly

45:39

as a result of internal pressure. Mike

45:41

spoke with the Nike CEO about

45:44

their efforts to- They're

45:46

trying to do better. Actually, they're

45:48

unfairly maligned. You're wrong about Nike.

45:51

I'm going back to my roots. They're

45:53

fine. The Nike is good

45:55

episode of You're Wrong About. Sarah, get on

45:57

it.

45:59

I mean like a lot of this is

46:01

internal marketing and external marketing. This is the thing

46:03

is that like there are three Reactions

46:06

to like corporate DEI if

46:08

you're an employee

46:10

One is like the weird true

46:12

believer who mistakenly thinks

46:14

that the company is actually trying

46:17

to do good in this world Yeah,

46:19

two is the cynic who's

46:21

like, oh what a bunch of fucking bullshit

46:23

whether or not the cynic believes it They

46:26

realize that the company does not and

46:28

so it doesn't really matter

46:30

And then three is the

46:32

right-wing nut job who's losing

46:34

their mind because they believe yeah That

46:37

it's authentic and genuine and

46:39

ironically has sort of aligned

46:41

themselves with the person in category

46:44

one, right? The suckers

46:46

who believe that it's real are

46:48

on like opposite sides of the political

46:51

spectrum Yeah

46:52

And then you have like the sort of cynical

46:55

mass of people across the spectrum who are

46:57

just like obviously this is bullshit Yeah, and therefore

47:00

I roll my eyes. Yeah. Yeah, whether

47:02

or not the ultimate message of it is something you believe

47:04

in So, I mean nearly everyone I have

47:06

worked with

47:07

My entire life and been friends with

47:10

has been roughly Politically

47:12

aligned with me to some degree at least

47:14

on like things like diversity sexual

47:17

harassment Etc and

47:20

yet almost all of them would roll their

47:22

eyes at like corporate sexual harassment training

47:25

Because everyone knows that it comes from a place

47:27

of inauthenticity Yeah, and

47:29

is a product of the company trying to cover its

47:32

ass more than anything else Yeah, this kind

47:34

of gets to my overall thoughts on corporate

47:36

pride Which I repeat every single year

47:37

is that I think fundamentally

47:40

like it's surface level it's bullshit But

47:42

also I would rather live in a country with

47:45

it than without it, right? Like I don't weep over

47:47

the fact that Target

47:48

is no longer gonna have a pride display But

47:51

like if companies do not feel safe having

47:53

cheesy pride displays, that's a sign

47:55

of like a country going

47:56

backwards What are they doing with their

47:58

pride displays? Because I've heard I've heard people say

48:00

they're getting rid of them. I've heard people saying they're moving

48:02

them to the back of the store. Like what's going on?

48:05

So I went to my local targets

48:08

and I chatted with a couple of employees.

48:10

I didn't like say I'm a journalist or doing a podcast or whatever.

48:12

I was just like, what's going on? Wow, this is fucking

48:15

boots on the ground journalism from

48:17

my cubs. I embedded at the local target.

48:19

Went to the nearest diner and asked them

48:21

about their experience at Target.

48:23

So according to the employees

48:25

at my local store, one of them I

48:27

talked to was opening and she

48:29

came in and just like all the swimsuits were

48:32

gone from the pride displays. And

48:34

they didn't like announce this. There wasn't like a

48:36

conversation within the company about

48:38

it. They were just kind of gone. My

48:41

read on the situation is that Target

48:43

executives were looking

48:44

at all of this happening and wanted

48:46

to like quietly get

48:49

rid of this stuff and like tamp it down. But

48:51

obviously they didn't want to do it publicly because then

48:53

you get the backlash

48:54

from LGBT people, right? So

48:57

my read is that they wanted to like quietly

48:59

remove the satanic stuff, quietly

49:01

remove the swimsuits and then like maybe

49:04

the right wing psychos will calm

49:07

down. Yeah, that'll work for sure. But then Fox

49:09

News sniffed them out, right? Fox News runs

49:11

this piece about like, here's an emergency meeting and

49:13

they're thinking of taking things off the shelf. And of course

49:15

they contact Target for like a statement.

49:18

And once all of this

49:19

stuff kind of goes public that the company is scrambling

49:21

behind the scenes, then they have to like say something

49:23

publicly. So the day

49:26

after the Fox News article runs,

49:28

we get a statement

49:29

from Target, which

49:32

says, for more than a decade,

49:34

Target has offered an assortment of products aimed

49:36

at celebrating Pride Month. Since introducing

49:38

this year's collection, we've experienced threats impacting

49:41

our team members' sense of

49:42

safety and wellbeing while at work. Given

49:44

these volatile circumstances, we are making

49:46

adjustments to our plans, including removing

49:49

items that have been at the center of the most significant

49:51

confrontational behavior. Our focus

49:53

now is on moving forward with our continuing

49:55

commitment to the LGBTQIA plus

49:58

community and standing with them as we celebrate. to

50:00

celebrate Pride Month and throughout the year. To be fair,

50:02

this feels somewhat

50:03

authentic, at least compared to the Bud

50:05

Light statement, because it seems

50:08

like what they're saying is like,

50:09

yeah, our corporate position is that

50:12

we stand by the LGBT

50:14

community, but also our

50:17

employees are being threatened and we can't just idly

50:20

stand by and let that happen, right? We're

50:22

going to acquiesce to some

50:24

of these demands or these implicit

50:26

demands because we're concerned about employee

50:28

safety. But also, a friend

50:30

of the show, Parker Malloy, wrote a really good post on this about,

50:33

Target is like

50:35

the 10th company that has

50:37

done something like very low-level,

50:39

superficial, pro-queer, and

50:42

then faced huge right-wing backlash, and

50:44

then pulled it back. And her point

50:47

was like, this is worse for us than

50:49

if you just hadn't done it in the first place, right?

50:51

Because what we

50:52

see happening is basically like, you're

50:54

capitulating to terrorists. So we've now

50:56

had bomb threats against targets in nine states.

50:59

A lot of the stores have had to be evacuated.

51:02

There's been various viral videos of people like tearing

51:05

down displays, shouting

51:07

at

51:07

the people who work at the stores.

51:10

One of the things that makes me so fucking mad about

51:12

all this shit from like the anti-vaxxers to this

51:14

stuff is how like it's always like the

51:16

frontline retail employees making

51:18

like minimum wage who have

51:20

to fucking deal with this stuff. And

51:22

so on some level, like morally

51:24

speaking, I can get why the executives

51:27

were like, we're just gonna get people out of harm's way. I

51:29

also feel like they're using this somewhat as an

51:31

excuse. Right, when like, they

51:34

were really concerned about their employees, you know, there's other

51:36

things that they could do. And like, yeah, I don't think working

51:38

conditions for target employees are like all that great.

51:41

That's why I want to see target employees

51:43

armed. And if

51:45

a Republican enters the store, they're

51:48

allowed to shoot. Republicans have defended profiling

51:50

for years to like stop Muslims in airports.

51:52

So like, sorry, man, maggot hat, you're not

51:54

getting in. Honestly sounds like a more reliable

51:56

predictor of commotion than

51:58

anything we've ever seen.

51:59

done with the TSA.

52:02

So we're seeing these corporations sort of try

52:04

to reckon with a world where you

52:06

can't abandon LGBT

52:08

people and allies because

52:11

they have a lot of support and

52:13

make up the majority of the country.

52:16

But you also have to cater

52:19

to this loud violent

52:22

aggressive minority. And I

52:24

think the actual lesson for companies

52:27

is cross your fingers and hope you don't get

52:29

selected. And you I don't know if you saw this in your research,

52:32

Peter, but they've already moved on to Kohl's, which

52:34

also apparently has pride displays. They're

52:37

going after the North Face because they

52:39

did an Instagram partnership something

52:41

something with a drag queen named Patagonia,

52:44

which is pretty good. It's

52:46

funny to do

52:47

a partnership with like one of your competitor company

52:49

names. Maybe they thought they were like co-opting. Yeah,

52:52

we will take away Patagonia's greatest

52:54

drag queen ally. But then, you know, I mean, earlier this

52:56

year we had the Hershey's thing. Hershey's

52:59

did a marketing campaign that included some trans

53:01

people and conservatives meltdown. There

53:03

was

53:04

Lego. They went after Lego because

53:06

they were going to have like black Lego

53:08

figures and like people with disabilities. That's

53:11

another one where you're like, you guys, it's

53:14

really revealing of the whole fucking project. Even though all

53:16

Legos are gender fluid, there's

53:19

no genitals. Pop a little wig on

53:21

that guy. And that's a gal now.

53:23

Well, also what's what's interesting to this, people have

53:25

been talking a lot in the last couple of years about like moving

53:27

the Overton window. Right. If you say like

53:29

the leftmost position, the median

53:32

political position then kind of moves to the left is

53:34

the idea. Right. To me, what all of this

53:36

represents is like the Overton window shifting

53:39

to the right. There was a period where it was like very

53:42

possible for companies to

53:44

make like normie

53:45

ass statements of

53:47

support for LGBT people. It

53:49

basically is just a proxy indicator for like

53:51

mainstream acceptance. And I think that's why

53:53

it's always so fraught for actual gay

53:55

people, because there's always a question like, well, do we want

53:57

mainstream acceptance or do we want to change the mainstream?

54:00

But then losing mainstream acceptance

54:02

feels really bad. It

54:05

feels bad. This is one of the first

54:07

episodes I've researched for this show where I really did

54:09

not feel good reading about this Target stuff.

54:11

Yeah, I felt the same way. It's like fuck

54:13

Target, but also I want the

54:15

dumb United Airlines float

54:17

at pride. Not because I think United Airlines

54:20

gives a shit, but it just means that it's

54:22

not controversial to support

54:24

gay people. It feels like a metric of progress

54:27

more than a good in and of itself.

54:29

Right. In a vacuum we shouldn't care about

54:31

these empty gestures at all,

54:34

but we're not in a vacuum. This

54:36

is the product of an ascendant reactionary

54:38

movement that is increasingly hateful, increasingly

54:41

aggressive, increasingly violent. The

54:44

corporations backing down so quickly

54:46

in some of these cases is a reminder that these

54:49

institutions that have pretended to stand with

54:51

the LGBT community for

54:53

a decade now will very

54:55

readily side with the fascists when

54:58

the chips are down. Easily. I have

55:00

this other maybe half baked thought, but I think that what's

55:02

interesting about the conservative

55:04

tactic here is that they get

55:06

the causation backwards. Corporate

55:09

pride is the aesthetic output

55:12

of a society that is more broadly

55:14

accepting of LGBT people. Conservatives

55:17

lost the fight over broad

55:20

social tolerance of LGBT people,

55:22

or at least LGB people, and

55:24

now they're attacking the aesthetic

55:27

outgrowths of that social tolerance.

55:30

I think in general, people on the right are sort

55:32

of blind to the difference between aesthetics

55:34

and material politics because

55:36

their politics are so aesthetic. They

55:38

don't want anything other than to feel

55:41

like they are firmly atop the social

55:44

hierarchy. I think it was Walter Benjamin

55:46

who said that fascism is

55:48

the aestheticization of politics.

55:51

The fascist public is being given a channel

55:54

to express their frustrations

55:57

without any material political

55:59

benefit.

55:59

accruing to themselves. So for

56:02

LGBT people, it's a material

56:04

fight because you can't separate the

56:06

Bud Light drama, the target drama

56:09

from anti-trans bills in state

56:11

legislatures, for example. But

56:13

for conservatives, it's purely aesthetic. They

56:15

have nothing material to gain here. It's about the

56:17

validation of their social status.

56:20

It's also, to me, there's also a huge

56:23

media component of this too that in

56:25

the 2010s after Obergefell, we had

56:27

a lot of takes that are like, okay, gay marriage

56:29

is kind of off the table. Conservatives

56:31

have kind of dropped gay marriage, anti-gay

56:34

stuff as a fight.

56:34

You'd even see essays

56:37

in The National Review and various other conservative

56:39

publications about like, well, the

56:42

gay thing, turns out it's actually really not that big of

56:44

a deal. But then the minute the

56:46

far

56:46

right becomes emboldened to

56:49

go after gay people, the center

56:52

right immediately capitulates and

56:54

immediately starts laundering this into,

56:56

well, there's actually some concerns. So

56:59

the

56:59

Media Matters for America had a piece about how

57:02

Jonah Goldberg went on

57:04

CNN when all this stuff was happening

57:06

and being like, well, you know, there's some real concerns about trans

57:08

youth and surgical procedures.

57:11

And it's like, these are people that are saying

57:13

that the products are satanic. These are fucking

57:15

psychos. And you're going on and being like, well, wait

57:18

a minute. What if the psychos have a point?

57:20

I also think there's a big thing with kind of transphobia itself

57:22

too, that like the JK Rowling

57:24

wing of like the quote unquote gender

57:26

critical movement, their argument

57:29

is always like, well, we're not an anti trans movement.

57:31

We're not trans folks, right? We just have reasonable

57:34

concerns about like same sex spaces

57:36

and reasonable concerns about kids. And

57:38

then this stuff happens that again, straightforward

57:41

bigotry and they're not pushing back.

57:44

No one on their side is like, hey, I am

57:46

actually concerned about the surgical procedures, but these people

57:48

are fucking weirdos. They're not doing that,

57:50

which should call

57:52

into question everything else they are

57:54

saying about their alleged reasonable

57:56

concerns about like, well, trans

57:59

kids and the surgical

57:59

It's become very

58:02

obvious that they are part of, you

58:05

can never say what anybody's individual motivations

58:07

are, but they are in league with

58:09

open right-wing bigots who are

58:12

aiming to turn back both trans

58:14

rights and LGBT rights and really broader

58:17

progressive gains more generally, right?

58:20

They are in league with these people. They're just like, oh yeah,

58:22

yeah, it turns out, maybe there's

58:24

some fascists doing death threats

58:26

on target, but I don't know why we should ever give

58:28

that any attention. Anyway, here's a whole eight

58:30

episode podcast series about the fucking witch

58:32

trials of JK Rowling. Right.

58:36

Right. And about how like trans people were mean to her

58:38

on the internet. It's like, well, is anyone mean on the internet

58:40

right now? Your dedication to fucking civility

58:43

on the internet. Anyone else you want to aim that ire

58:45

at? No?

58:46

Okay. Yeah. I

58:48

mean, from the right, it's never a real demand for civility. No.

58:51

It's a demand for complacency. That's what they actually want.

58:54

Can we end with a quiz, Peter? I'm

58:57

going to send you a quote

58:58

and you have to guess where it's from. A lot

59:01

of pressure after I fucking knock

59:03

that math stuff out of the park a couple of episodes

59:06

again. I know it's a problem you peaked too early. Yeah.

59:08

This is about a culture of violence taking over the left. Okay.

59:11

Now that some students, professors and activists

59:14

are labeling their opponents words as violence,

59:17

they give themselves permission to engage

59:19

in ideologically motivated physical violence.

59:22

As an essay in the Berkeley student newspaper

59:24

argued, the rationale

59:26

is that physically violent actions used

59:29

to shut down speech that is deemed hateful

59:31

are quote, not acts of violence, but

59:34

rather

59:35

acts of self defense. This

59:37

kind of identity politics amplifies

59:39

the human proclivity for us versus them

59:42

thinking.

59:43

It prepares students for battle, not

59:45

for learning. What's your feelings, Peter? So

59:48

I am going to enter

59:51

my mind space here and say that this is Barry

59:53

Weiss. Ooh. Is that right?

59:55

This is from the coddling of the American mind.

59:58

Fuck. Fuck. whether

1:00:00

you actually read the books for this podcast. Okay, the

1:00:02

us versus them thinking, I thought it was you baiting

1:00:04

me. Fuck,

1:00:06

damn, I can't believe I swung and missed on that shit. You're

1:00:08

two for three, Peter, with the math ones. Fuck out my whole day.

1:00:10

There's another element of moderate complacency here,

1:00:13

right? Where for years now, we've

1:00:15

been told that there's like a spirit

1:00:17

of authoritarianism and a culture

1:00:19

of violence on the left,

1:00:20

right? And it's always about to spill

1:00:22

over into violence. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. This is a core

1:00:25

argument to the entire cancel culture panic that

1:00:27

it's not about cancel culture. It's a slippery

1:00:29

slope to these college students, people

1:00:31

on the left, engaging in violence much more,

1:00:34

right? And yet, now

1:00:37

that people are using actual violence,

1:00:40

actual threats, nothing, no

1:00:42

outcry from the moderates, they are still

1:00:45

writing these same fucking pieces.

1:00:47

They're like, you gotta watch out for the left. All

1:00:49

of the right wing complaints of

1:00:53

authoritarianism and

1:00:55

extremism coming from the

1:00:58

left are justified in

1:01:00

abstract terms, right? Like Glenn

1:01:02

Greenwald has been talking about

1:01:05

left wing authoritarianism for

1:01:07

a couple of years. And

1:01:09

all he means is like the enforcement

1:01:12

of cultural norms by

1:01:14

Twitter users. Or like linguistic shifts. Right.

1:01:17

We're using this word when we used to say that word, okay.

1:01:21

The idea that

1:01:23

like these lefty impulses

1:01:26

are driven by this greater evil

1:01:30

that if we leave it unchecked, we

1:01:32

will eventually see. Right, right. But

1:01:35

it's all to be seen because

1:01:37

they have not been able to actually articulate

1:01:40

a material complaint about

1:01:42

leftist authoritarianism or violence.

1:01:45

All they've been able to do is point towards

1:01:47

these really abstract concepts

1:01:51

and label that

1:01:52

authoritarian or violent.

1:01:55

Whereas the authoritarianism

1:01:58

of the right and the right wing, the

1:02:00

violence of the right is objectively

1:02:03

measurable to a much larger degree. The

1:02:05

people who are not engaging in violence

1:02:07

are about to start at any time.

1:02:09

The people currently engaging

1:02:11

in violence are about to stop and we

1:02:13

shouldn't worry. If we're talking about a culture

1:02:15

of violence, it is clear that we do have a huge

1:02:17

problem with that in the United States,

1:02:19

but it is one dimensionally, straightforwardly

1:02:23

coming from the right. We don't have anything

1:02:25

like that on the left at all. Okay,

1:02:28

now it got

1:02:28

real quiet. We have nothing to end with. Yeah.

1:02:31

You need to end us on a joke, Peter. I know

1:02:33

you're tired and you're sleepy. I have two forms of tired.

1:02:35

One is when I'm in my prime joke form.

1:02:39

My brain can be occasionally reduced

1:02:41

to only jokes and

1:02:43

it can also be reduced to no jokes. As

1:02:45

your podcast co-host, I just want joke, Peter. I

1:02:48

don't wanna hear your thoughts on pride. I just want your little

1:02:50

quips today. That's what I

1:02:52

need from you. I tweeted, I skied it

1:02:54

yesterday about, I'm

1:02:56

using it, about

1:02:58

gay men at pride. Oh

1:03:01

yeah, yeah, yeah. I've always had this sort of thought that so

1:03:03

many complaints about kink at pride

1:03:06

and complaints about degenerate

1:03:09

behavior in general, in the homosexual

1:03:11

community, are actually just complaints about

1:03:14

men. Yeah. What's actually

1:03:16

happening, and I think I've told this

1:03:18

to you before, what's actually happening is you're

1:03:20

just seeing the behavior of men unfiltered

1:03:22

by the presence of women in their lives

1:03:24

to tell them to stop. I'm

1:03:28

glad we finally got to the part where you're problematic, Peter. I

1:03:30

know what was coming. I'm

1:03:33

trying to get my latent

1:03:35

homophobia flowing, just

1:03:37

to hit the edges of that perfect joke. That

1:03:40

was a good ski. Your

1:03:43

ski was so good, I saved it and sent it to friends of

1:03:45

mine that aren't on this guy. It

1:03:47

says,

1:03:47

I have it in my little folder. It says, if

1:03:49

your child sees some gays being hypersexual

1:03:51

and gross at pride, you need to sit them down

1:03:54

and explain the cold hard reality that all

1:03:56

men are like this. Well,

1:03:58

I've always... I

1:04:00

always had this sort of thought that so much of

1:04:04

what manifests as homophobia

1:04:06

is actually

1:04:08

discrimination against the behavior

1:04:11

of men. The

1:04:13

justified discrimination. Justified.

1:04:16

Because, yeah, a lot of people be like, oh, you

1:04:19

think that gay people are disgusting

1:04:22

and hypersexual

1:04:24

and that's actually your homophobia. And

1:04:26

the other side of that is like, well,

1:04:28

yes, but it's actually what that really is a

1:04:31

complaint about is the behavior of men. I'm

1:04:33

so against the patriarchy that I hate

1:04:35

gay men. All I'm saying is that you can woke

1:04:37

yourself into being homophobic

1:04:38

again. I

1:04:43

think that's it. I think we got it, Peter. That

1:04:45

was good. Glad you woke up at the end. This is what

1:04:47

gets me animated. Thinking

1:04:49

of ways to be problematic while

1:04:52

layering a woken

1:04:54

up justification on top of it that our

1:04:57

listeners are like, all right, well, he's got us.