It's All Culture War All The Time
From Disney to Oreos get ready to fight over everything and everyone who takes a side in the red/blue divide.
I’m Michael A. Cohen, and this is Truth and Consequences: A no-holds-barred look at the absurdities, hypocrisies, and surreality of American politics. If you received this email - or you are a free subscriber - and you’d like to subscribe: you can sign up below.
Since I subscribe to several mailing lists for far-right politicians, I occasionally get some rather, um, interesting emails in my inbox — like this one:
“Your Cookie Must Affirm Your Sexual Lifestyle’: Oreo Takes Pro-LGBT Stance In New Ad Spot.”
My curiosity got the better of me, and so underneath an article titled “Empty Your Bowels Every Morning — Top Surgeon’s Advice,” I clicked away, which led to me a Daily Wire article by the same name:
It’s not even June yet and already corporations are signaling their allegiance to the progressive LGBT agenda.
The latest seemingly unaffiliated brand to come out in support of the cause is none other than Oreo Cookie, which has been owned by the multinational food and beverage conglomerate Mondelez International since 2012.
The marketing team at Oreo couldn’t wait until “Pride Month” to put out a new commercial spot which featured a young man coming out as gay to his grandmother.
You can watch the ad below, and while I’m not sure what it has to do with Oreos, it’s quite lovely.
According to Ben Shapiro, who runs Daily Wire, the problem with “the story is that every woke corporation now believes it must become an activist LGBTQIA+-%6& outlet. And yes, that’s a story.”
Is it? Is embracing a young gay man’s decision to come out to his grandmother embracing an activist agenda? Or is it rather a recognition of the conversations taking place in households across America as gay men and women come out to their families?
If I understand this conservative grievance correctly, it is problematic to simply present gay Americans as human beings worthy of recognition and respect. To be clear, the right is not so much upset that corporations and teachers are promoting a “gay lifestyle” as they are upset that they’re not promoting a conservative, patriarchal lifestyle.
Don’t Say Gay
This is, to a large extent, the root of the issue with Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill, which bans the discussion of gender identity and sexual orientation in public elementary schools for grades K-3, and was recently signed into law by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.
To be clear, those pushing this legislation are not opposed to traditional gender markers like “he and she,” “girl and boy,” or “husband and wife.” They’re opposed to any discussion that goes against them. Forbidding a schoolroom conversation about sexual orientation presupposes that all people are heterosexual — and that any deviation from that norm should not be taught to children.
This is culture war politics to the nth degree, namely playing on the fears of traditional conservatives that the world is changing around them and only Republican politicians are willing to man the barricades to stop it.
But what is perhaps more distressing about this moment is how powerful a weapon culture war politics have become for Republicans. Cultural grievances are now the predominant force in GOP politics.
Consider, for example, the fallout in Florida from this toxic piece of legislation. As the “Don’t Say Gay” bill winded its way through the state legislature, the Disney Corporation initially stayed out of the fight. But as internal company protests grew, the company’s CEO Bob Chapek was forced to act. He spoke out against the legislation and announced that Disney would be reassessing its political donations.
Since then all hell has broken loose — against Disney. DeSantis blasted the company for “trying to impost a woke ideology” and went ahead and signed the bill. Since then, he’s raised the possibility of rolling back the millions in tax benefits and regulatory carveouts that the state provides Disney. GOP legislators have already met to debate revoking Disney’s tax status, and DeSantis is sending out fundraising emails based on the controversy.
Others in the conservative media universe have jumped on the bandwagon.
Lauren Boebert sent out this tweet …
… which misspelled Mickey and incorrectly described how copyright protections (not trademarks) get extended).
Ohio Senate candidate JD Vance accused Disney of declaring war on American children.
On Fox News, Laura Ingraham offered a chilling warning:
I’ll be honest in saying there are certain things I didn’t expect to see in American politics — and one of them is an entire political party going to war with Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck. But here we are.
The thing is, Disney is not some mom-and-pop, corner store. It’s a company that contributes $75 billion to the Florida economy. It has dozens of lobbyists at the state capital in Tallahassee and has donated close to $5 million in campaign contributions, 80 percent of which have gone to state Republicans. Also, Disney is a fairly popular consumer brand.
One might imagine that getting into a fight with Disney is not the best idea for a Florida politician, but in a political era in which cultural grievances are such potent political forces on the far right, it makes perfect sense. DeSantis is likely running for president in two years and this legislation — along with his attacks on critical race theory — is intended to appeal to (primarily white) Republican primary voters who fear that America is changing in ways they don’t like.
The fact that DeSantis’s war on Disney could create problems for one of the top job creators in his state and, from a more narrow political perspective, alienate non-Republican voters, is of secondary importance. Let’s put aside the fact that Republicans have long been the party of the free market and blasted Democratic interference in the business world. Attacking Disney for expressing a political opinion — and threatening government retribution — seems rather inconsistent with this long-standing ideological position. But cultural grievance is the surest path to the heart of the modern Republican voter, and that’s all that matters.
Unfortunately, the dustup with Disney and the attacks on Oreos are not a passing phenomenon. Over the past several years we’ve seen culture war fights like this with everything from Goya beans and Dr. Seuss to Major League Baseball, Mr. Potato Head, and “Big Tech.”
As Yale management guru, Jeffrey Sonnenfeldt noted last fall, the red/blue divide is now “permanently part of the social context of business” in America. Of course, it’s not just business. The entire response to the Covid-19 pandemic became so polarized that literally, hundreds of thousands of Americans died because of their refusal to take safety precautions and get vaccinated.
The result is that we are living in a very different age — one in which political polarization, informed by the unending cultural battles of the far-right is the defining construct of modern America. Everything is political and everything, even Oreos, is a source of division.
What’s Going On
Good piece by Mark Pinsky on the background for DeSantis’s fight with Disney.
Mark Lynch has some thoughts on the future of the Middle East
Monica Toft says Vladimir Putin has little incentive to make peace.
Musical Interlude
Michael, a perhaps unpublicized value of this Substack are your Musical Interlude links! Thank you for your past links to Grateful Dead performances. Now you've posted a flashback to my childhood with the Sesame Street video. As for the Lizzo video, I'm not going to be able to get the tune out of my head.
I have so many thoughts on your article and how Republicans are becoming more fascist everyday, but I'm just going to bop my head to Batches and Cookies for now.