There was something telling in the latest example of idiotic and woke corporate virtue signaling that came courtesy of high-end car manufacturer Jaguar.
In addition to the spectacle of an odd-looking man running around in an ill-fitting dress without a car in sight, there was the equally bizarre rationalization of it.
Rawdon Glover, an official at the carmaker, said in an interview with the Financial Times the ad wasn’t meant to preach “woke” acceptance of gender intersectionality.
Rather, he said, the commercial was designed to help Jaguar “move away from traditional automotive stereotypes” to sell more cars.
What exactly a “traditional automotive stereotype” is, is anyone’s guess.
But last I checked, men who prefer a lifestyle that blurs traditional gender roles represent around 0.5% of the US population.
Jaguars, meanwhile, can cost you anywhere from about $50,000 to around $92,000, so it’s not exactly affordable to the family of four, transgender or otherwise.
As I point out in my book “Go Woke Go Broke; The Inside Story of the Radicalization of Corporate America,” the same warped thinking led to some of the biggest business debacles of the last century and maybe the biggest brand destructions ever: Bud Light’s decision to feature in one of its online ads a half-naked trans activist, Dylan Mulvaney, giggling in a bubble bath.
Image makers at the beer company, owned by the Davos-centric globalist at AB-InBev, thought their centuries-old image appealing to Americana — from the iconic Clydesdales to the cute pooch Spuds MacKenzie surrounded by real women in bikinis — was too gauche for modern American sensibilities.
‘Out of touch’
America’s No. 1 beer was too “fratty” and “out of touch,” a top marketing executive said.
We all know how that turned out: Bud Light went from the nation’s No. 1 selling beer to No 3.
Its image has never recovered even as it began paying tens of millions of dollars in a sponsorship deal with Dana White’s very unwoke UFC to go fratty again.
Sorry, most men — in fact nearly all — don’t wear dresses or like posing as women when they bathe.
They definitely hate being preached to by big corporations that they should embrace such behavior.
Madison Avenue, however, still hasn’t gotten that simple message.
My sources say a key tenet of wokeness, “DEI,” remains an overriding factor in image making despite its dubious legality (the recent SCOTUS ruling on affirmative action), its unfairness and loathing by most consumers.
DEI is the acronym for Diversity Equity and Inclusion, a corporate philosophy that focuses on people’s “intersectional matrix,” i.e. race and gender fluidity. In modern advertising, such considerations are more important than selling the product.
It is why nearly every traditional family you now see on TV ads are of mixed race or of the gender-intersectional variety. The fact this country is increasingly multiracial is a good thing, of course. But the intersectional matrix doesn’t reflect the reality of how most people live. Plus it isn’t great at selling stuff unless your primary goal is changing the culture of a country that wants to be changed on its own schedule.
Again, if that were not the case, Bud Light would still be No. 1. Dylan Mulvaney as opposed to the unwoke UFC would still be a Bud sponsor. Good luck, Mr. Glover.
Break the endowment
The only other place where woke thrives more than Madison Avenue is the American college system. But with the election of Donald Trump, there may be a quick and dirty solution: It’s called “breaking” the university endowment system.
And it’s something my trading sources have been talking about recently as a way to end once and for all the left-wing indoctrination at many top universities that encourages chanting stuff like “kill the Jews” as normal conduct.
It’s a version, they say, of what the famed hedge fund trader and now leftist agitator George Soros and his top trader Scott Bessent (now Trump’s Treasury secretary nominee) did back in the day: They shorted the British pound, essentially “broke” the Bank of England until it began to reform its policy agenda. Soros and Bessent earned $1 billion in the process.
Breaking the university endowment system might not be a money maker on Wall Street, but the American people may benefit in several ways. Endowments are some of the biggest investment funds on the planet. Yet they are largely tax free because they are nonprofits. They need to pay their fair share like the rest of us.
Plus The Donald can fulfill his campaign pledge to throw out the “Marxist maniacs” (his words, though they contain plenty of truth) from campuses by levying, as has been floated, a hefty 35% tax on their investment income and hitting the crazies where it hurts.
Big Ivy League endowments have moved heavily into private equity in recent years. These investments are highly illiquid. If sources of fundraising begin to dry up because Wall Streeters like Bill Ackman and Marc Rowan — who have been protesting woke university policies — continue to cut off funding and the universities are faced with big tax bills, the endowments will have to sell off investments, including the hard-to-price PE stuff to make ends meet.
The life source of the entire left-wing indoctrination system will be put on life support because Yale, Harvard, Penn, MIT and the rest can’t pay the rent much less brainwash students and allow radicals to foment hatred without money.