While right-wingers were in a spitting rage on Twitter about Bud Light promoting its sponsorship with Dylan Mulvaney, the social media chimera, here’s what happened: Mulvaney continued making money and then partnered with Nike and Olay in yet more corporate sponsorship deals.
That people noticed and tweeted their sassy disapproval of the beer campaign was interpreted by some culturally traditional onlookers as a win in itself, but nobody should kid themselves. Neither Bud Light, nor Nike, nor Olay cares. They will do this type of thing again because the political right is only spectating in a game that the left is aggressively playing. And winning.
The New York Post last week reported on the Corporate Equality Index, a type of social credit score cooked up and pushed on corporations by the imperious Human Rights Campaign, another leftist shakedown operation that disguises itself as a protector of minorities. There is no science or measurable method to the HRC’s index, only categories like “Corporate social responsibility,” which advise companies on “marketing or advertising to LGBTQ consumers.” HRC determines whether the categories have been fulfilled and to what degree, then doles out invisible “points” as a reward for compliance.
And the most crucial part of the Post report, and what everyone on the right needs to wake up to, is this: “It doesn’t just sit back passively either. HRC sends representatives to corporations every year telling them what kind of stuff they have to make visible at the company. They give them a list of demands and if they don’t follow through there’s a threat that you won’t keep your CEI score.”
This is how all of these “social awareness nonprofits” of the left work— their core function (other than providing fat salaries to their chairmen) is intimidating corporations.
Haven’t you ever thought it strange that the ads you see on the ratings-dominant cable news channel Fox News are almost exclusively for retirement planning and those MyPillow products? Flip over to CNN or MSNBC (assuming you’re thrice boosted and only after securing an N95 face mask), and you’ll see a lot more variety. You’ll see attractive ads for automakers, home appliances, and even department stores.
How is it that the channel with an audience share roughly double the size of its nearest competitor, in both total viewers and the key 45-54 age demographic, is an ad-buying pariah, while its far less popular competitors are regarded by corporate America as perfect vehicles for product placement? There is no convincing me that anything said on Fox is more controversial than what has come out of the filthy mouth holes of Don Lemon and Joy-Ann Reid.
The answer is that what HRC does with its Corporate Equality Index is identical to what Media Matters for America (MMFA) does with all of its own hostile campaigns. Its “Take Action” web page is nothing but a list of petitions for people to sign demanding the censorship of all popular right-wingers on TV, radio, and the internet, largely by threatening boycotts against advertisers. The top one on the page as of this writing: “Tell Advertisers: Drop Fox.”
On top of that, MMFA reps make regular visits to ad buyers prepared with presentations of media clips attempting to make anyone they don’t like — Tucker Carlson, The Federalist, Ben Shapiro, etc. — look bad.
See here? These people and places you’re advertising with are too controversial. We have a petition with 3 million names calling for you to pull all of your commercials. Otherwise…
I know that’s what MMFA does. The sitting president of the organization (before he was that) told me it’s what they do.
It works, and there is nothing equivalent on the right. There is no Americans Tired of This Nonsense (ATTN!) to send its own agents to Bud Light, Tide, and Ford to say, “Hey, just a heads up, your customer base is game hunters, NASCAR fans, and stay-home moms. Using a ditzy tranny as your mascot isn’t really the vibe. And here we have a survey in which most said they would consider buying a competing product if that’s the route you choose.”
Social media mocking and moaning does absolutely nothing when the opposition is physically in the same room as the corporate executives who make these decisions.
If the right fixes that problem, maybe it will have a shot.
