I Buy What I Like

It’s been a minute since I’ve posted.  The fast and furious storm of bullshit that is the news forced me into decision paralysis around topics.  But I figure that I can write about current events without discussing the War with Iran, Israel, Lebanon, Gaza, Hezbollah, Hamas, the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, chronic inflation, Medicaid and SNAP cuts, ICE, cosplaying cabinet members, UFC cage matches on the White House lawn, triumphal arches, painting the bottoms of reflecting pools, that goddam ballroom, and You Know Who.

So, here goes…

I’ll start with the whiskey.  Bourbon.  Woodford Reserve, to be exact.  Even more specifically, the batch purchased by alleged FBI director Kash Patel.  Not content with heading up the nation’s premier law enforcement agency, Mr. Patel wants to be the googly-eyed face of a lifestyle brand.  He’s hawking bottles of Woodford Reserve engraved with his imprimatur.  Kash—sorry, Ka$h—one must carefully safeguard one’s personal branding--has reportedly been giving away these personalized bottles as gifts.  He probably won’t try to sell these due to trademark infringement, but there are other Ka$h tchotchkes to be had.  Seriously.  Just go to https://kashpatel.store. 

Now, it isn’t any surprise if you believe imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.  Just look at the long line of products shilled by Patel’s master over the years.  Most of it garbage, but each of these had their eager buyers.  The grift never ends.

But the trend of taking advantage of true believers points up a larger, more prevalent phenomenon.  I think most of us have consumer brands, famous or mundane, that we favor.  For me, there are items ranging from durable goods to breakfast cereals where I will only buy a particular brand. 

In my case, I make these purchases because each of them fulfills a specific need.  What I’m not doing is making some kind of statement.  None of them is tied to group affinity or loyalty to a cause.  I buy what I like.

But for some of us, especially to people who are chronically online, consumer brands have become still another front of the culture wars.  I first commented on this trend a few years ago in this space.  When it came to light that Dan Cathy, the patriarch of the Chick-fil-A family, had spent considerable funds opposing legislation legalizing same-sex marriage, there was a short-lived tempest on both sides of the political spectrum.  Protestors began demonstrating in front of Chick-fil-As across the land.  SUVs carrying real Americans jammed the drive-thrus with those on foot jamming the indoor lobbies.

Chick-fil-A was one of the first times I connected the dots between consumer brands and culture war virtue signaling.  While there are more than a few brands culturally coded as liberal or even left, it’s those attracting a conservative following so strong that any kind of deviation in terms of marketing or brand identity drives some people into conniptions. I can point to several recent examples.

About three years ago, trans actress and influencer Dylan Mulvaney released a video on Instagram featuring a personalized commemorative Bud Light can inscribed “Cheers to 365 days of being a woman.”  True to form, the right wing trolls lost their shit.  In no time flat, Fox and other conservative outlets were fuming that this single social media post was proof of the unstoppable force of insane liberals and large corporations bending the knee to woke ideology.  Calls went out to boycott Anheuser-Busch.

The boycott did have an effect on sales.  Sales of Bud Light dropped by a third over the ensuing weeks.  By many reports, they haven’t fully recovered.  But the news moved on eventually to focus on some other manufactured outrage.  (For the record, I have been boycotting Bud Light my entire life.  Life’s too short for crappy beer.)

Cracker Barrel has had a couple of public relations scrapes of late.  If you’re not familiar with the chain, think of a cornpone Applebee’s.  Attempting to accommodate patrons following healthier diets, the restaurant added a meatless sausage to the breakfast menu.  It did not remove any of the existing meat items.  No matter.  The red blooded meat eaters were horrified that Cracker Barrel, their Cracker Barrel had caved to the soy boys.  The pushback was apparently short-lived.  As of this writing, Impossible Sausage remains on the menu at my local Cracker Barrel.

The other, more recent dustup concerned Cracker Barrel’s logo refresh.  For years, the logo featured a man in overalls sitting next to a barrel.  The old logo catered to both kinds of customer—those who could read, and those who couldn’t.  A few months back, they unveiled a stylized logo featuring just the name in an updated logotype.  Nothing controversial.

I was wrong.  The social media on the right had a fucking meltdown.  Many posters, having discovered Cracker Barrel’s CEO was a woman, accused her of being a woke DEI hire despite her having been in the position for about a decade.  Another lamented that the logo update ruined what he called a family tradition.  (The chain dates back to 1977.  You know, the era of such traditions as disco, platform shoes, bad haircuts, and wide lapels.)  Still another said his elderly parents swore never to eat there again.

Unlike the great Impossible Sausage controversy, corporate quickly reversed course.  As a number of would-be internet wags put it, the faithful got back the cracker and the barrel.  Right-wing outrage has the potential to shape some brands.  It seems that these people internalize brand preferences as identity.  It is much in the way that many of these same folks internalize their affinity with a certain politician as identity. 

Imagine having so little, so few substantial things to hold on to that you have to grasp at the ephemeral to believe you stand for something.  That is the world we live in.

 

 

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