Shocking Study: Consumers Not Impressed By Brands That Insult Them!
So weird how that works.
The point of advertising, some might say, is to encourage people to want to buy your product. The more people want to buy your product, the more money you make. If you make bad advertisements that people don't like, they may not want to buy your product and then you have just wasted a bunch of money. It's not actually that hard to understand.
And yet, Ben Mitchell of the Evening Standard seems very concerned about a recent study showing that — wait for it — brands may face repercussions if they put out advertisements that insult people. Repercussions like those people and the people who care about them not buying their product. In an article ominously titled "Brands must adapt to ‘serious threat’ of being called out by ‘woke’ generation," Mitchell uses the commonsense research of University of Portsmouth lecturer Karen Middleton, picking out the quotes from her study most likely to enrage readers of the Evening Standard who believe that woke young people are straight up terrorizing the world by ... not just brushing it off when people or companies insult them or others on the basis of their gender, sexual orientation, or ethnicity.
Major brands risk losing wealth and power if they rely on old-fashioned ideas in their advertising, thanks to the “woke” generation calling them out, according to new research.
The study, led by Karen Middleton, senior lecturer in marketing at the University of Portsmouth found that consumer activism against perceived “dangerous” portrayals of women and other demographic groups poses a “growing and serious threat” to brands.
The study, published in Psychology & Marketing examined the social media backlash against a KFC television advertisement showing boys ogling a woman’s breasts.
Some consumers called it sexist and damaging, while others defended it as “just a bit of fun”.
The researchers said that, in the wake of the #MeToo movement, brands risk losing market share if they brush off “socially aware” objections.
Oh no, the advertisers were just trying to have a "bit of fun" and then a group of evil harpies had to go and ... not like the ad they did. The horror, really.
“They are increasingly up against a force of social activism which relies on well-argued rhetoric to call out anything seen as damaging to another group in society.
“Our study examined people’s reactions to an advertisement by a global brand portraying a woman in a sexist way, but the same social activism could and often is rallied when advertisements use outdated tropes which are damaging to any vulnerable group, not just women.”
She described “woke” as social activism on a grand scale and added that brands have no alternative to taking into consideration the impact of social media responses to advertising campaigns.
Things are categorically different in some ways than they were in the past, when feminist and anti-racist criticism of the advertising industry were largely regulated to smaller circles and not massive Twitter audiences. What's not a new thing, however, is advertisers having to consider what people will think of their ads, because that is literally what marketing is. Maybe they have to think of things in a slightly different way now and add more diversity to their focus groups, but writ large, it's not a new thing for anyone in that industry to have to consider.
I really don't think the issue is that "advertisers" and "brands" and "men" are truly having trouble figuring out that people don't like it when they feel someone or something insults or degrades them. Ultimately, this is about a loss of power. Being able to make fun of people or otherwise be shitty to them without facing consequences for that behavior is a demonstration of power.
Or anyway it was.
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Tucker's Show Has Masculinity Issues Even When He's Not There
Let's talk vasectomies, Brandon!
Wasn't there just a really weird Tucker thing a couple weeks ago about prostates? There was.
And now Tucker is off doing whatever Tucker does between Christmas and New Years — BRO STUFF, we bet —- and a conversation happened on his show last night about how if you have a vasectomy, you are less of a man.
The guest host: That idiot Sean Duffy, who used to be on "The Real World," and then he was a Republican congressman, and right when he was about to leave Congress, he was like. "now I will introduce a bill to make it illegal to abort gay fetuses!" It was a really clever gotcha, and all the libs are still recovering to this day.
Oh yeah, he has nine kids. This is supposed to be impressive. He's gonna mention it in this clip.
The guest: Chadwick Moore. He's a gay white conservative, so you can imagine how he is.
Now you may watch a bunch of vasectomy talk on the Tucker show, between Moore, the gay conservative who has a lot of opinions about this, and Duffy, HEY DID YOU HEAR THAT GUY HAS NINE KIDS?
When we say every second of this clip is stranger than the last, we are not kidding. It's some of the weirdest shit we've seen on Tucker in a long time, and that's sayin' something. Watch, and then we'll do our best to understand below.
It keeps going.\n\n"I hope these men get a free box set of Harry Potter when they go in for their snip, and some soylent... Fine, if that's what you want to do, go for it! But [a vasectomy] does make you less of a man, I'm sorry."pic.twitter.com/0sV3zA6HSG— Justin Baragona (@Justin Baragona) 1640656535
They're talking about an article in the Washington Post about hetero dudes — some of them married! — getting vasectomies as "an act of love," because of how abortion rights are under threat.
Duffy wants to know if this might be "really just about consequence-free sex." We guess he's one of those sad humans who thinks sex must always have "consequences," HEY DID YOU HEAR HE HAS NINE KIDS? Peener! Vagina! Nine times!
Moore makes it really weird by saying, "I mean, why stop at the vasectomy? I think you just lop the whole thing off and become trans! That's what you should do if you really love your wife and want to show her what a supporter of womanhood you are, and the female cause." We have no idea where to begin with that one, but maybe if Moore hires a therapist at some point, they will. Gay conservative white men are often extremely transphobic, though.
Moore refers to vasectomies — chosen vasectomies, undertaken enthusiastically! — as "men being mutilated in a clinical setting unnecessarily." And he asks how people would react if there were a "trend" of women getting their tubes tied because they love their husbands. Which ... is he unfamiliar with tubal ligation? It's literally the most common form of contraception for people with uteruses — more than the pill! But vasectomies are WAY easier.
Moore says maybe wives should do that for their husbands — gay conservative white guys: still willing to tell women what to do! — but also says if that was happening, then they (the liberals) would call those women "horrible" and "self-hating." (Remember, we're in the imagination zone of Moore's brain right now, we can't debunk his every misunderstanding in every paragraph.)
Moore adds that "of course we can laugh at these men who are doing this." Because these guys think it's funny when straight dudes and their wives can fuck without having to worry about getting pregnant. Ha ha!
That hypothetical therapist we mentioned would have a field day with all these next parts:
MOORE: Consequence-free sex is what drives the Left. It's their religion. It fuels almost everything they do.
What kinds of "consequences" does a gay conservative white man believe there should be for sex? We shudder to imagine.
MOORE: And of course they believe in population control, they want fewer people on the planet. Of course, populations aren't growing in rich, western countries except by illegal immigration.
Casual racism and fearful confusion about the world? Check.
MOORE: So I wonder how, if you were to take this to parts of the world where the population is exploding, like in, I dunno, sub-Saharan Africa, or Central America, I wonder how those men would react to being told that they should have a vasectomy to show how much they love their women.
Note that he refers to such women as "their women." Note that nobody is talking about forcing anybody to have a vasectomy. It's all so weird.
That's when Sean Duffy refers to "men in bike shorts" who get vasectomies, comparing them to "conservative men like me who have nine kids!" and practically jizzes himself — WITH TEEMING THRONGS OF SPERM WE IMAGINE — over the notion that there are "conservatives being born and liberals not having kids!" They think it's so funny.
And it is funny. But the real reason it's funny is because every liberal and progressive reading this knows approximately 500 fellow liberals and progressives who escaped conservative families, or maybe they have cordial relationships with their conservative families, but don't share their values. But virtually nobody knows anybody who ever went the other direction. Cities are full of millions of liberals who wouldn't be here today if wingnuts out in the hinterlands had maybe gotten a fuckin' vasectomy.
So perhaps not the gotcha Duffy thinks it is? But again: This is the guy who intro'd that bill to try to ban aborting gay fetuses. He's an airhead.
And that's when Chadwick Moore says he hopes men who get vasectomies "get a free box set of Harry Potter when they go in for their snip, and some soylent," before finally dropping his truth that "It does make you less of a man. Sorry."
Got it, bros with vasectomies? That guy says you're less of a man now. Sorry. We don't make the rules, he does.
The end.
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LIVEBLOG: E. Jean Carroll Takes On Trump At The Second Circuit
Rah rah ree, kick him in the knee! Rah rah rick, kick him in the ... other knee.
It's fightin' Friday in New York as E. Jean Carroll goes another round with gross alleged rapist and former president Donald Trump. While in office, Trump ducked the process server like a deadbeat dad when Carroll sued him in state court. Then when she was just about to get discovery, including taking a DNA sample to match against male genetic material on the dress she says she wore the day of the assault all those years ago in a Bergdorf Goodman's dressing room, Bill Barr swooped in and tried to substitute the government as a defendant in the defamation case under the Federal Tort Claims Act.
And if you are wondering what the hell saying a woman is too grody to rape has to do with the job of presidenting, then you are in agreement with US District Judge Lewis Kaplan who ruled in October 2020 that the president is not an employee for purposes of the Federal Tort Claims Act, and even if he were, that this conduct would have been outside the scope of his employment. So the DOJ was out and Trump was back on the docket as the named defendant.
But then the government appealed. Yes, we know you all hate AG Merrick Garland — DOJ gonna DOJ.
That brings us to today, when the Justice Department is arguing at the Second Circuit to stay in the case as defendant, and Carroll's superstar attorneys at Kaplan, Hecker, & Fink, Joshua Matz and Roberta Kaplan will make the case that they were appropriately yeeted and should stay that way.
The case will be heard by a three judge panel consisting of Judge Denny Chin, a Clinton Obama appointee, Judge Guido Calabresi, another Clinton appointee, and Judge William Nardini, a Trump appointee. Fun fact: Judge Nardini, age 52, clerked for Judge Calabresi, age 89.
Okay, let's get it on! Hot liveblog action comin' at ya.
10:40 Mark Freeman for DOJ says he's not here to justify those "crude" comments about Carroll, but Trump was asked a question about the news.
Judge Chin (I think?) asks if ANY comment about the news is covered under the federal tort claims act.
Judge Calabresi asks what law determines whether it's within the scope of employment, speculates that it's DC local statute.
10:42 "Nonsense, nonsense!" thunders Judge Calabresi at the DOJ attorney, says that federal court decisions about DC employment law is just a guess.
Fun start!
10:45 Judge Calabresi: "Let me just be very blunt. Why shouldn't we do what we do in these cases, certify the question to the courts of DC?"
(Remember that the Justice Department removed the case from state court to federal court under the Federal Tort Claims Act.)
Freeman says that public officials have to speak about public events, so it's a question of federal law, not DC law.
Calabresi is having exactly none of it.
10:50 Judge Calabresi: "It is up to local law to decide."
Freeman responds that the issue is whether the government can substitute itself as defendant under federal law. Calabresi counters that the issue is whether Trump saying he wouldn't rape Carroll because she "wouldn't be my first choice" was within the scope of employment under DC statute.
10:55 LOL, looks like Trump's regular lawyer Mark Kasowitz is out and this goofball lady from Bedminster, NJ is coming in for him. Her name is Alina Habba, and she's not exactly what you'd expect from a billionaire in federal appellate court. She's the one who demanded that the Pulitzer Committee withdraw the prizes for the Times and the Post because RUSSIA HOAX WITCH HUNT.
10:56 Judge Calabresi, in his lightly accented gentle voice, is still kicking the DOJ lawyer's ass on a relatively abstruse issue of scope of employment law. He's just posed a hypothetical in Posneria and Calabresia (for Judge Richard Posner and himself, lol).
"Neither lawyer nor court know much about tort law. Unfortunately you have someone who has spent 60 years teaching it."
11:00 Habba up: "This case is meritless."
Habba says that Trump isn't worried on his own account: "It is solely to protect the presidency as an institution."
Judge Nardini (I think) says this is a choice of law question, not about the power of the presidency.
Habba making the interesting choice to tell the judges they're wrong. Cool deal.
11:03 Habba takes the maximalist position that basically everything the president says is within the scope of employment.
The court asks her if Trump should have been considered an employee under the Westfall Act. Seems like kind of a superficial analysis, not a great tactic with Judge Calbresi, who is in love with weedsy analysis and is now going on about legislative history.
11:11 Habba is arguing that Westfall Act applies to the executive branch, and the president is part of the executive branch. The lower court held that he's above it.
Calabresi is envisioning a tort case arising out of golf game between the Presidents of US and France which goes awry. Did I mention he's 89?
Habba: "The president can be disciplined, if you look at President Trump, he gets disciplined a lot."
And lo, lightning did not strike her on the spot.
Habba goes on to attack Carroll, says she was "on the aggressor's side" by writing a book, so Trump had to comment in his own defense.
Judge Chin points out that Trump went way beyond denial to say "she's not my type," wonders how that's within the scope of employment.
Habba whiffs, badly IMO.
Judge Calabresi: "The problem is that you're discussing it with Judge Chin and you could be discussing it with me" then returns to saying "it's up to DC."
Judge Nardini presses Habba to come up with a hypothetical of something that would be outside the scope of employment. "What is the limiting principle you would propose?"
"Within the scope of DC law," Calabresi shouts.
Habba says that an unprovoked attack would be outside the scope, unlike here where Carroll "provoked" Trump.
Judge Nardini is walking her through it like a law student. "I don't understand the provocation point."
11:15 Habba says that Trump had to comment because it went to his fitness as a president.
Judge Calabresi says "that's an interesting argument that DC courts might accept."
Habba says that "Hillary Rodham Clinton used [this law] to keep her private servers private."
Habba: "When somebody says he did a heinous crime twenty years ago, he needs to address it."
Judge Calabresi: "You can't make me an argument that Congress should have not made this a state question."
11:21 Joshua Matz, for Carroll, begins with scope of employment. Says that conduct for private motives like "revenge or retaliation" is outside the scope of employment under DC law.
Man is he a good lawyer. He's the one who just won that case against the Charlottesville Nazis.
Matz rubbishes the "provocation test" Habba just put forward, argues that the DOJ is taking the opposite stance in Swalwell v. Brooks, in which it is currently arguing that under the FTCA Rep. Mo Brooks is not entitled to be defended by the federal government for his remarks at the January 6 insurrection rally. (I'll put links in the next time Judge Calabresi goes off on a tangent.)
11:25 Oh, boy. Here's that tangent on the bifurcation of tort law in America in the 40s. DRINK.
11:27 Judge Chin (I think) says that the test isn't really whether an employee's action "benefits" an employer anymore, refers to an employee at a laundromat who shoots someone on the premises. Judge Calabresi is talking about olde-timey bill collectors beating up debtors and "dirty dancing analysis."
11:32 Judge Nardini (I think) asks Matz to explain why his opponent is wrong when she argues (even poorly) that the president is constantly being asked to prove and comment on his fitness for office.
Matz is happy to let the DC Court certify the issue — i.e. decide whether Trump's comments were within the scope of employment — since that's clearly what Judge Calabresi wants.
Judge Calabresi: Suppose the president is awarding medals ... sees someone who insulted him, and as he puts the medal and chokes him. And maybe kills him. Is that within the scope of employment?
Matz says UH NO.
11:35 Judge Calabresi says presidents often lie and break the law, but says that it's impeachable when "somebody like Mr. Nixon" does something that's for his own benefit.
Judge Chin gets Matz to agree that a mere denial of Carroll's rape allegation would be within the scope of employment, but that calling her a liar too ugly to rape is not.
Judge Nardini says why is the denial not defamatory, but calling her a liar is. Matz says the issue is whether he's acting for private motive.
11:40 Nardini is getting to a good point here. If mere denial is not defamatory and is within the scope of employment, then why is all the rest of the horrible shit Trump said about Carroll outside the scope.
Matz says the issue is "private motive," not "improper purpose," goes back to "retaliation" an "animus" as laid out in DC law.
Judge Calabresi jumps in to give a case history of DC scope of employment precedent.
11:43 Judge Chin doesn't seem inclined to send the case to DC court to decide, steers Matz back to federal issue of whether the Federal Tort Claims Act and Westfall Act apply to the president. Remember, these laws substitute the government as defendant in cases against government employees for conduct within the scope of government employment.
Matz points out that the law wasn't enacted for the benefit of government employees, rather it was for plaintiffs so they could actually sue someone who could afford to pay.
Oh, lord, Judge Calabresi is back to the Golfing With Foreign Leaders tort hypothetical.
11:50 Judge Nardini is now wading into the case of the Frenchman beaned by a golfball hit by the US President. WTF???
Matz is trying to swim back to shore here, return to the issue of whether the Federal Tort Claims Act applies to the president.
Judge Calabresi: "If you don't like my golf course, suppose he's in his official car. The president is in a hurry and says "go speed" ... Do we want the fact that in 1946, given what they were trying to do to make victims whole ..."
Judge Calabresi is trying to get to what people injured by a president are supposed to do, should the law exempt the highest officer if the point of the law is to help victims?
Matz says that the legislative history doesn't support that.
In conclusion, Matz says "denying a remedy on the basis of sovereign immunity" flies in the face of the precept that no one is above the law.
11:53 Freeman is up for DOJ on rebuttal, a back and forth on the applicability of FTCA and Westfall Act to the president and congressional intent.
Judge Calabresi hammers his point about needing to send to DC: "unless the outrageousness in DC defines the scope"
Freeman says DC law uses time and place to determine scope, and these comments were made on South Lawn and Airforce One.
11:55 Habba up for rebuttal next.
OMG she went there: "What are we going to do if Kyle Rittenhouse goes after President Biden for calling him a white supremacist?"
Habba says that Trump didn't want to diminish the severity of "real assaults."
Habba attacks Carroll: "She made this a matter of public concern, he did not."
Judge Calabresi takes this as evidence that the case should go to DC courts for certification on the issue.
COURT ADJOURNED.
POST SCRIPT: To clarify, what Judge Calabresi wants is for the federal court to ask DC municipal court (is there a better word for that?) to decide whether Trump's comments about Carroll are within the scope of employment as a matter of DC law. His theory is that this is dispositive as to whether the federal government can substitute itself as a defendant.
The other judges, as federal judges are wont to do, think themselves perfectly capable of ruling on an issue of state law and seem less inclined to ask DC court for clarity — and anyway the DC court could tell them to thanks but no thanks, in theory.
My impression of the case is that Trump didn't bring one of his really good lawyers, and it showed. The DOJ lawyer did better, but he's arguing that saying a woman is too ugly to rape is within the scope of employment, which isn't a great position. Joshua Matz is a superstar, although he got tripped up trying to parse why Trump denying the allegation was non-defamatory and within the scope of employment, but the rest of the horrible, insulting shit was not part of the job.
We'll keep you posted.
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Chris Cuomo, GTFO.
It's time, bro.
Yesterday the New York Attorney General dropped another round of documents in the investigation into former Governor Andrew Cuomo. To say that it makes his brother Chris Cuomo look bad is something of an understatement. Contrary to his earlier denials that he simply offered supported as a brother, it's clear that the CNN host coordinated with the governor's staff and outside advisors to craft a response to the onslaught of accusers.
Even worse, he used his contacts as a journalist to run down leads to discredit the women accusing his brother of sexual misconduct.
“Rumor going around from politico 1-2 more ppl coming out tomorrow. Can u check your sources?” texted the governor's chief of staff Melissa DeRosa in March.
“On it," Cuomo replied, adding later, “No one has heard that yet.”
So not so much with his on-air claim in August that, "I never attacked nor encouraged anyone to attack any woman who came forward. I never made calls to the press about my brother's situation."
"I have a lead on the wedding girl," he said in a different text exchange with DeRosa, referring to another of his brother's accusers. In deposition he explained that "my friend had heard that maybe she had been put up to it." Which might have worked if there weren't photographic evidence of the exchange. He also appears to have done some digging into New Yorker reporter Ronan Farrow's reporting on former gubernatorial staffer Lindsey Boylan's Medium post detailing years of harassment by Andrew Cuomo.
“If If ronan has nothing better than boylan thats a great sign," he texted DeRosa on March 14.
“Did u get any more intel?” DeRosa followed up the next day.
“Story not ready for tomorrow,” Cuomo responded.
In addition to his frequent texts with DeRosa, Chris Cuomo was looped into the crisis management team via email as it sought to craft the governor's response to the avalanche of accusations kicked off by Boylan's revelations.
And you know what?
I GET IT.
I, too, would do very bad things to protect my brothers (let alone my children).
I might dig for dirt on "the wedding girl" and then testify that "I would never do oppo research on anybody alleging anything like this. I'm not in the oppo research business. I don't tolerate a lot of oppo research on any level."
I'd probably even believe in my heart that I was telling the truth.
"This is my brother, and I'm trying to help my brother through a situation where he has told me he did nothing wrong. And that's it for me," Chris Cuomo testified. "How do I protect my family? How do I help protect him? Probably should have been thinking more about how I protect myself, which just never occurred to me. And that was it."
Ya think?
And yet, these things happened, and they are not okay, as Cuomo himself seems to have known at the time.
"Delete thread now," he texted DeRosa on March 10, a practice he attempted to explain away in testimony as a "constant and consistent concern about being hacked or someone obtaining my device and violating the trust of people who have put their trust in me."
But however understandable and human his conduct, CNN cannot continue to have a guy in prime time who wandered step by step so far off the path. Even when, as The Atlantic's David Graham points out, the network that allowed a host to interview his own brother on air bears some responsibility for creating an environment where journalistic standards might look more like suggestions than hard and fast rules.
"The thousands of pages of additional transcripts and exhibits that were released today by the NY Attorney General deserve a thorough review and consideration," CNN said in a statement yesterday. "We will be having conversations and seeking additional clarity about their significance as they relate to CNN over the next several days."
Well, better late than never.
[NYAG / Atlantic / CNN / CNBC]
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