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Apologies If Any Of You Are Experiencing Difficulties

My hosting company is apparently having…issues. Images aren’t loading or are timing out. Sometimes the site is completely inaccessible.

This normally resolves on itself after a brief period, but it seems it’s hanging on  today like Trump’s fantasies of avoiding prison.

I think this is a sign I need to get off my ass and run the errands I need to do today.

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The Right’s War on Brands Is Stupid and Terrifying

From New Republic:

The anti-LGBTQ attacks of Bud Light and Target are no mere boycotts—the aim is to intimidate companies into submission.

Even by the right’s recent standards, the ongoing backlash to Bud Light is convoluted and stupid. To the extent that it can be summed up, it goes something like this. Last month, the perfectly acceptable beverage company sent trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney some beer to celebrate her first year of womanhood. Mulvaney then did what influencers do when they receive free stuff: She posted about it in conjunction with a sweepstakes associated with March Madness. Right-wingers saw this, freaked out, and began a boycott. The beer’s sales have subsequently plummeted; right-wingers claimed victory after the company parted ways with two executives who were responsible for the very normal brand promotion—and then continued the boycott anyway.

The Mulvaney episode is now a playbook for the right. If a company makes any statement, however minor or tepid, in support of LGBTQ rights, launch a boycott and cause a firestorm—it doesn’t matter if anything makes sense. What matters in the end is that the company is left without any credible means of responding to the contretemps. Bud Light has backed down somewhat—again, two people lost their jobs over something extremely trivial—but it hasn’t amounted to “amends” as far as the braying lunatics who kicked off this firestorm are concerned. They have managed to turn being a mewling, whining infant into a political identity: They see a woman with some beers, and they throw a tantrum. And they don’t stop.

Target is the latest company to find itself on this newest and stupidest front of the culture wars. Its sins go something like this: In honor of Pride Month, the big box retailer put some shirts with rainbows on them in the store. Conservatives saw this and absolutely melted down, demanding—you guessed it—a boycott. Target responded by backing down: It moved Pride displays from the front of its stores to the back; its opponents declared victory—and then kept up the boycott anyway. Again: The objection here is T-shirts. With rainbows on them.

J.D. Vance, who once wrote a book about how people need to remember how to be tough and use their bootstraps while having a stiff upper lip, more or less summed up the “objections” of this group of whiners:

Much like Bud Light’s crime, Target’s sin is stupendously anodyne. Companies have been acknowledging Pride Month for years; selling merchandise—and profiting—from this sort of thing is precisely the business that Target is in. More importantly, these shirts don’t actually do anything. For one thing, they’re shirts. For another, they simply acknowledge the existence of LGBTQ people during a month aimed at celebrating Pride.

But this is ultimately the objection here, to the extent that anything coherent can be pulled from these actions. The right-wingers storming the barricades of Target—Target!—want to pull back decades of cultural progress and return to a world in which gay liberation isn’t a thing. It’s profoundly reactionary, even by recent standards.

But it’s also a profoundly nihilistic and fascistic impulse. The movements that have sprouted up in protest of Bud Light and Target—and Disney, in Ron DeSantis’s case—are designed to intimidate. These groups want to terrify companies into toeing a line that their tiny faction—and they alone—dictate. There are no rules to follow and no hard lines drawn; the confusion is the point: Cross the pissbabies, and your stock price will tank, your quarterly earnings will collapse, and your executives will be fired. There’s no acceptable response other than total, preemptive capitulation. Needless to say, this is profoundly un-American.

There are stray elements of this larger movement on the right that are geared toward trying to replicate American consumer culture but with a right-wing bent. Black Rifle Coffee, the burnt-tasting coffee company with a big gun on the bag—so you know they have the right politics—is arguably the leader of this trend. Actively courting Trump voters for years—the coffee company endorsed the Muslim ban for some reason, among other execrable political acts—the company has attempted to replicate Starbucks’s popularity with some success: Their coffee is available at gun ranges and convenience stores across the country. When Bud Light fell afoul of right-wing influencers, some enterprising marketers attempted to profit—again, with limited success. (Presumably the boycotters have moved on to some of the many similar beers, some of which are made by Bud Light’s parent company, the absolutely massive and monopolistic AB InBev.) These efforts, to stand up a parallel free market in which brands are always flexing their political identity (ironically after many years in which the same people professed a desire for major brands to be apolitical) are stuttering, but they are not going away anytime soon.

Still, the biggest aspect of the ongoing Target and Bud Light brouhaha is as a naked, stupid, and often terrifying example of power—one for which a response has yet to be developed: It’s hard to see how the silent, sane majority of Target shoppers can rise up in the company’s defense. The opponents of these companies are menacing; they want to scare these brands and their employees on the front line. (Indeed, Target moved its displays citing employee safety.) They’re also hardly aimed at Target and Bud Light alone. This is a war aimed at corporate America writ large: Make any statement acknowledging the existence of anyone we don’t like, and you’re next.

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We’re Safe

Back when I was in the architectural profession, one of the guys I worked for passed on a bit of sage advice: When you design a client’s house, you need to get it designed and submitted for permits within 30 days. Why? Because back in the day new magazines came out every month.

The more you think about it, the more it makes sense.

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We. Are. Doomed.

(But I have to admit that Captain Fabulous’s response was—pardon the expression—dead on.

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Oh Look! Another Bleach Blond Barbie Screeching Her Outrage!

From Comic Sans:

Failed GOP Candidate’s Attempt At Painting LGBTQ+ People As ‘Demons’ Backfires Gloriously

After QAnoner and failed Republican Senate candidate Lauren Witzke shared a graphic of ‘Pride Month’ fading to ‘Demon,’ LGBTQ+ people instead embraced it.

Failed Republican Senate candidate and QAnon conspiracy theorist Lauren Witzke attempt to undermine Pride Month has unexpectedly garnered support for the LGBTQ+ community.

Witzke’s post, featuring an image with the words “Pride Month” fading to reveal the word “demon” in rainbow letters, faced strong opposition from LGBTQ+ individuals and allies who embraced the meme, ridiculed Witzke, and highlighted the queer and trans artist responsible for creating the rainbow version of the image.

You can see Witzke’s tweet below.

Artist Veya, who uses fae/they pronouns, repurposed the original anti-LGBTQ+ meme in 2021. The initial image, attributed to Christian publisher Sword-In-Hand Publishing’s Facebook page, displayed the word “demon” in red letters after the fading of the phrase “Pride Month.”

However, Veya transformed the meme into a symbol of empowerment and inclusivity by replacing the red letters with rainbow colors. This artistic reinterpretation gained attention after Witzke’s misguided attempt to discredit Pride Month.

In a follow-up tweet, Witzke seemed blissfully unaware of how her tweet would be received, writing:

“Demons can seethe. Christians are DONE taking crap from the LGBTQ Mafia. We’re cancelling Pride Month, pouring out your Bud Light, shutting down your Targets, and we’re taking back the rainbow.”

“We will also stand up for our right to criticize your depravity in court. No more cowarding, no more pandering.”

In response to Witzke’s tweet, the LGBTQ+ community and its supporters created various parodies and riffs on her post.

These creative and empowering responses not only countered Witzke’s message but also highlighted the rejection of her divisive rhetoric.

Numerous individuals also expressed their support by purchasing T-shirts featuring Veya’s design, further amplifying the artist’s visibility.

https://twitter.com/_mortar_level/status/1662844991851360259

https://twitter.com/blestboys/status/1663148809533136898

Witzke has a extensive track record of targeting and criticizing LGBTQ+ individuals.

In March 2021, Witzke responded to a tweet by diplomat Richard Grenell regarding a trans woman’s attendance at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) by making derogatory statements, claiming that transgender people are “mentally ill” and “demonic.”

Witzke, who previously worked as a host for the far-right conspiracy theory and disinformation website TruNews, also referred to the COVID-19 outbreak that affected the outlet as a “demonic attack.” She attributed this attack to the channel’s hosting of far-right provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos, who identifies as “ex-gay,” and referred to him as “Satan’s favorite sodomite.”

More recently, Witzke expressed her support for Uganda’s death penalty for homosexuality, stating that unlike lawmakers in Texas, the Ugandan government recognized the need to prevent any perceived encroachment by the LGBTQ+ community and labeled them the “LGBTQ Mafia.”

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Words of Wisdom

From Doug:

Here’s what matters in life:

Did you love someone, and did someone love you? 

Have you had some fun, shared some laughs, and helped a few people along the way? 

Did you make the world an ever-so-slightly, infinitesimally better place?

If you can answer these questions yes, shake your own hand in congratulations. You’re a success. Continue that success for as long as you can, and don’t worry too much about getting your act together.

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I’m Officially OLD

Back in the mid 90s, I seriously doubted I would live to see this birthday. Even though I kept testing negative, after attending multiple weekly funerals and watching friends drop like flies from AIDS, planning for my “retirement” wasn’t even a thing I remotely considered having to worry about. When the small architectural firm I was working for at the time set up a 401K for me, I immediately cashed it out, telling them, “I don’t expect to live to see 65.”

And yet, here we are…

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?

Conservatives: “Haha we owned them!”

Straight allies: “This is so offensive. Stop attacking queer people.”

Actual queer people: “Can I get this on a shirt?”

Wear it with PRIDE.

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An Old Friend, Rediscovered

Remember this one? It was my go-to scent from about 1979 thru 1986, and if you weren’t wearing Polo you were probably Halston. I hadn’t thought about it in years but rediscovered it after taking a detour down an internet rabbit hole while trying to remember the name of the Pierre Cardin cologne (the one in the phallic bottle) I wore prior to 1979.

I found it on Amazon of all places. Turns out they never stopped making it, but I haven’t seen it in at a fragrance counter in years. (Of course, I haven’t been to a fragrance counter since the 2000s, so maybe that has something to do with it.)

Even though they’ve altered the formula a bit since the 80s (current regulations apparently forbid the use of real oakmoss), it still smells just as amazing as I remember it.

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