This is why you can't take the woke mob seriously
I’m the kind of person who thinks everyone should be treated decently and not doing so because of some characteristic is just stupid.
But the woke take what should be a basic concept and turn it on its head, being offended by literally everything. They ultimately figure that reality should be twisted, at least as it’s presented to the public, and pretend that everyone who isn’t white is perfect and everyone who is white is really vile.
And companies have been trying to appease the woke mob.
It’s not that these people represent a majority. They’re just a very loud minority that thinks they can bully everyone into compliance.
Yet their attacks on Heinz really show how braindead they are.
Ketchup is now cancelled.
Black Lives Matter activists are accusing Heinz of publishing a pair of "racist" ads: one apparently omitting the appearance of a black dad character — supposedly an insinuation that the condiment company believes most black households are fatherless — and the other allegedly reminiscent of Jim Crow-era minstrel shows.
The first controversial commercial, part of the U.S. food manufacturer's campaign called "Family Portraits," celebrates an interracial couple on their wedding day. Specifically, the graphic shows a black bride indulging in Heinz's new family-sized pasta sauce at her reception while relatives look on in amusement. Seated to her left appears to be her newly wedded husband, who's white, and an older black woman meant to be her mother. On the other side are the groom's parents, presumably. Apparently absent is the bride's father, not pictured.
Racial justice warriors took to social media to rage-tweet about the advertisement, with some saying it embodies the "erasure" of black fathers in mainstream media. Another called it "subliminal messaging," a means of "perpetuating myths" about black absentee fathers. Leading the pitchfork army is Guardian contributor Nels Abbey, author of "Think Like a White Man: A Satirical Guide to Conquering the World . . . While Black."
Not everyone was offended, of course. One black woman pointed out that she wasn’t bothered because there are a lot of black men and women who grow up without a father. Erasing their experiences is just as problematic as making like that’s the universal truth for black families as a whole.
But there’s a kicker here.
Perhaps the giveaway is what's written in the bottom right-hand corner of the ad: "Based on a true story."
That’s right. This was apparently based on someone’s lived experience. You know, that thing that supposedly trumps reality whenever it’s invoked? Yeah, that.
And it’s not even the dumbest part of the attacks on the company’s marketing.
The second advert in question depicts a black man holding a hamburger with Heinz ketchup smeared around his mouth.
Ahead of Halloween, it ran as part of Heinz's latest European ketchup campaign called "Smiles," which was launched as a nod to the new "Joker" movie, according to AdAge. The series features other actors, who are white, grinning ear to ear and similarly styled with their lips lined with ketchup. The ads are taglined, "It ha ha has to be Heinz," evidently a reference to the "Joker" sequel, "Folie à Deux," meaning "shared madness."
Critics claimed it "bears resemblance to historical[ly] racist caricatures," carries "blackface connotations," and contains imagery invoking 19th-century minstrel shows, in which white actors portrayed black people as dimwitted and buffoonish, often donning clownish features, such as enlarged red lips.
If it were just a black dude in the ad and no other similar ads, they might have a point. Instead, they’re kvetching about nonsense.
See, if the ad campaign hadn’t featured someone black, Heinz would have been accused of racism. If they said they were afraid of the optics, that it would look like a minstrel show or something, then they’d be outraged that they couldn’t see that black men could enjoy ketchup as much as white men and only a racist would see any such thing.
In other words, someone would likely go out of their way to be offended.
But you can’t demand inclusion and then get mad because inclusion ruffles your feathers you’re included. It’s especially stupid when some of the ads reflect someone’s actual life.
Then again, the woke mob thinks they should be taken seriously when they aren’t serious people. Serious people might have asked the question, and then at least considered the answer.
Instead, they’ve manufactured supposed experts who will never tell the mob they’re wrong, such as the “DEI marketing experts” quoted in the above-linked piece later who couldn’t even look at the one based on a true story and say, “Yeah, people need to stop getting their knickers in a twist over that one.”
Again, they shouldn’t be taken seriously because they’re not serious people.
And they go out of their way to prove it every single day.
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