Harry’s canceled The Daily Wire right into competition. The Federalist has learned that TDW, a news outlet founded by Ben Shapiro and Jeremey Boering in 2015, is planning to launch a men’s grooming business. The move marks a small but meaningful escalation in the splintering of our economy into woke and anti-woke sectors.
Last week, Harry’s, a millennial-friendly hygiene company, pulled its ads from “The Michael Knowles Show” after being alerted to Knowles’s allegedly “transphobic and homophobic content” by a Twitter account with less than 10 followers.
“Thanks for bringing this up,” Harry’s tweeted on March 19. “We condemn the views in this video, which are inexcusable & at odds with our longtime support of the LGBTQ+ community. We’ve ended our relationship with this show & are looking into our sponsorships to prevent any values misalignment going forward.”
The video in question features a perfectly reasonable interview with Joseph Nicolosi Jr., who runs a group that supplies “support for men with unwanted same-sex sexual attractions.”
Now, The Federalist can exclusively report The Daily Wire is eyeing the launch of a direct-to-consumer men’s grooming line. In a Thursday statement to The Federalist, Daily Wire CEO Jeremy Boreing said, “The woke left seems determined to make every economic decision a political decision. With companies like Harry’s essentially signaling that conservatives don’t deserve their products because of ‘values misalignment’, a dual economy is beginning to emerge.”
“We’re evaluating starting several direct-to-consumer businesses to meet that new demand, including in the men’s grooming space,” Boering continued. “It’s time to challenge the cultural hegemony of the 23-year-old woke staffers who apparently drive strategy for so many of these businesses. It’s time for conservatives to stop funding companies who hate us, and to get busy creating alternatives.”
This is more than a splashy schtick. Boering’s point about the emerging “dual economy” is a serious one. As we’ve reported before, The Daily Wire is already a key player in the creation of a new media and entertainment infrastructure that challenges the dominance of legacy institutions who allow the radical left’s cancel culture to set their standards.
As these standards consume Hollywood and create an underserved market of non-leftist consumers, The Daily Wire stepped into the film business. The outlet acquired distribution rights to “Run Hide Fight,” then snapped up Gina Carano for a new film after Disney dropped her from “The Mandalorian” over a social media post.
As the “dual economy” emerges in media and entertainment, TDW’s admittedly hilarious foray into men’s grooming will be an early test of that duality’s limits. Outside the political economy, is there a demand for products sold by anti-woke companies?
If the outlet’s grooming line succeeds, it will be a strong signal to investors that, indeed, there’s a big demand for products that help consumers disentangle their finances from the increasingly radical corporate culture.
As of now, corporations follow the incentives to placate woke police in the news media and leftists on social media, fearful of public relations headaches. Serious efforts to compete in this space from politically neutral or conservative companies could change that dynamic.
This story has been updated to reflect that The Daily Wire’s are in the preliminary phase.
