Business & Commercial

I Have To Ask: What Is Disney Doing And Why?

/ Jack Marshall / 57 Comments

For a couple of weeks now, I’ve been planning a long post examining what Disney’s mission and methodology need to be in 21st Century America. Walt’s creation faces an important challenge and a difficult one, and I would hope that the people responsible for guiding a company whose role in shaping U.S. culture has been both successful and beneficent as well as profitable are up to the task. They had better be, for the sake of the culture, not merely stockholders.

I was well on the way to devising a post I felt would be perceptive and provocative when I saw the video above. That stopped me cold. I wasn’t exactly optimistic about Disney, which has been a major positive influence in my own life, being able to safely navigate around the cultural icebergs in the roiling societal seas ahead before I watched the thing, but now I am as confused as I am depressed.

The classic starting point for ethical analysis is “What’s going on here?” In this case, it is more appropriate to ask, “What THE HELL is going on here?”

I’m open to suggestions.

OK, I Admit It: Target Is Making It Difficult To Maintain The Ethics Alarms Anti-Organized Boycott Position…

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

Fox News reports…

“Target Corporation is partnering with a K-12 education group for which focuses on getting districts to adopt policies that will keep parents in the dark on their child’s in-school gender transition, providing sexually explicit books to schools for free, and integrating gender ideology at all levels of curriculum in public schools…”GLSEN leads the movement in creating affirming… and anti-racist spaces for LGBTQIA+ students. We are proud of 10+ years of collaboration with GLSEN and continue to support their mission,” Target said. The retail giant provides annual donations to GLSEN. GLSEN calls for gender ideology to be integrated into all classes, even math. It provides educators instructions on how they can make math “more inclusive of trans and non-binary identities” by including “they/them” pronouns in word problems. In another example, GLSEN recommended that teachers intervene if students are making graphs about sex and gender to ensure it includes the ideology supported by GLSEN. “When students are creating their own surveys, if they want to include data for biological sex, teachers need to be sure they include both intersex and other as choices.””[A]nd if the students want to include data for gender, a variety of choices need to be included, such as agender, genderfluid, female, male, nonbinary, transman, transwoman, and other,” a lesson plan continued….

To date, the retail giant has donated at least $2.1 million to GLSEN, which offers districts and students guidance on how to hide gender transitions from parents. 

For example, its policy for districts said, “[The local education agency] shall ensure that all personally identifiable and medical information relating to transgender and nonbinary students is kept confidential… Staff or educators shall not disclose any information that may reveal a student’s gender identity to others, including parents or guardian… This disclosure must be discussed with the student, prior to any action.”

Corporations have many of the same rights as individuals, and if Target wants to contribute to an organization that guides schools to conspire against parents and indoctrinate students into LGBTQ+ ideology and political agendas against the wishes of their parents (where doing so is legal), it has that right. Similarly, I have the right, and, I believe, the ethical obligation to ensure that none of my money finds its way to GLSEN or any similarly unethical organization through Target.

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Ethics Dunce: Target (Again)

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

Morons.

Yesterday Target sent out a mass internal email (above) continuing the woke pandering that has already cost the company billions in stock losses. The posturing and now the doubling down makes no sense from a business perspective or an ethical perspective. The chain had to close over a hundred outlets last year: this is just management incompetence that endangers the jobs and livelihood of the same people the email is “thanking.”

Here’s the text, in case you have as bad reading vision as I do:

“Yesterday was a very hard day for Target, and as CEO Brian Cornell said, thank you for the care you’ve shown each other, our frontline teams, and the LGBTQIA+ community. Today brings more reflection, pain and the need for continued care as our team, hometown and world remember the murder of George Floyd. As you make space to take care of yourself and each other, know that you can always tap into these tools from Team Member LIfe Resources, and as Mental Health Awareness Month continues, turn to Take Five to Take Care hub for more wellbeing support.”

I wouldn’t personally boycott Target because it is promoting gonad-tucking bathing suits for mentally-ill men, but I might stop frequenting a store that wants to celebrate the George Floyd disaster as if it were the Alamo or The Maine. There was literally nothing good that came out of the Summer of Floyd. People died, communities set themselves up for more crime and violence by rejecting the police; rioting spread across the nation, the justice system was compromised by a jury allowed to deliberate despite prejudicial influences during the trial, and then apparently ignored the “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard to convict Derek Chauvin.

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Now THAT’S An Incompetent Baker…

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

The family ordered the birthday cake design on the left, but the cake delivered was the one on the right, with cute little sperms instead of heart-shaped balloons.

The boy’s name was also Zayeem, not “Yazeem.”

But, to be fair, that baker will happily bake a same-sex wedding cake…

Miller Lite Surpasses Bud Lite’s Self-Immolating Beer Ad With One That’s Even More Unethical

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

By now it should be clear what was wrong with the Bud Light promotion featuring silly biological male drag queen Dylan Mulvaney,. First of all, it was incompetent: alienating your core market to score political correctness points with  groups that don’t care about your product is idiotic. It was also irresponsible: investors in the company don’t own stock to be part of political grandstanding, they want to make money, and a company has an obligation not to undermine that objective. It was disrespectful too: making one’s product into a symbol of one side of a culture wars skirmish forces consumers to take sides, and is a slap in the face to consumers who don’t happen to agree with the company’s stance.

None of this was difficult to figure out, but a smug female marketing VP decided to use her job to advance her own political beliefs rather than to do what she was hired to do: sell beer.  This, of course, should have meant a bonanza for the competitors of Bud Lite; if Bud’s sales were going to implode (and they have, down about 25% with no relief in sight), light beer-lovers (weird as they may be) had to go somewhere. But even before the “Drink Bud Lite, show your support for self-identifying women with penises” campaign, Miller Lite had issued the smugly woke video above during Women’s History Month. It’s worse than the Bud Lite ad, even though it won’t lose as many loyal customers:

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Unethical Website Of The Month: “The Anarchist”

/ Jack Marshall / 25 Comments

“The Anarchist”is the website of a hate-based Toronto coffee shop of the same name. Ironically, Ethics Alarms just learned of the site’s existence as it announced the demise of the business. (Good!) The shop anointed itself as “an anti-capitalist cafe, shop and radical community space on stolen land”—yes, the owners are delusional. It was a “pay what you choose” establishment designed to spit in the metaphorical eye of evil Capitalism. Of course it went belly-up, though the fact that the carzy project lasted even a year is impressive, sort of, in the same way Brian Stelter getting hired is impressive.

Here are some highlights from the website:

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Comment Of The Day: Final Ethics Observations On The Bud Light-Dylan Mulvaney Ethics Train Wreck

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

When I implied that with yesterday’s post about the Bud Light-Dylan Mulvaney fiasco I was through commenting on the matter, I didn’t mean to preclude others from doing so. Here, Michael R. opens up a whole new wing of commentary that I managed to keep shuttered.

Today was also another entry on the episode’s timeline with ethical resonance: The CEO of Anheuser-Busch tried to avoid some accountability in an earnings call with investors by insisting that the whole thing was misinterpreted, was “not a campaign,” and should not have had so much attention attached to it. He also promised investors that Bud Light will triple its marketing spend this summer to undo the damage that the company was not really at fault for. “Anheuser-Busch did not intend to create controversy or make a political statement,” he said, unconvincingly. “In reality, the Bud Light can posted by a social media influencer that sparked all the conversation was provided by an outside agency without Anheuser-Busch management awareness or approval. Since that time, the lack of oversight and control over marketing decisions has been addressed and a new VP of Bud Light marketing has been announced.”

How do investors retain trust in a company with such loose and inattentive management that this could happen? Is just announcing, “Not to worry, it’s all fixed now!” sufficient to restore their confidence?

Just asking, not observing.

Here is Michael R’s Comment of the Day on the post, “Final Ethics Observations On The Bud Light-Dylan Mulvaney Ethics Train Wreck”:

***

I don’t see this as a boycott. I see this as people being done with a product. People boycotting something usually have demands. Bud Light’s former customers aren’t demanding anything. They are just done with the brand.

Let’s see the timeline of events:

(1) Company hires feminist, woke, woman as ‘historic’ hire.
(2) Woke female executive finds that none of her friends use or patronize ‘her’ product.
(3) Woke female executive finds that the customers of ‘her’ product are not ‘cool’ or ‘hip’, like her friends, but are ‘frattish’ and ‘out of touch’. Some of them might have even voted for Trump!
(4) Woke female executive decides that the brand is ‘dying’ despite its great success, so she needs to turn the brand around.
(5) She decides to ‘turn the brand around’ by getting rid of the current customers and attract a new, better clientele.
(6) This turnaround is accomplished by destroying the brand for the existing customer.

Oh, I’m sorry, that was the timeline of events for the destruction of Star Wars.

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More Reasons Why Fox Was Ethically Obligated To Fire Tucker Carlson

/ Jack Marshall / 64 Comments

The outpouring of conservative support for Tucker Carlson is quite nauseating, and shows an unfortunate infestation of bad judgment and ethics corruption when the necessary conduct is to recognize that an ideological ally is neither trustworthy nor honest.

One report yesterday, pointing to the Fox News’ ratings crashing with Carlson’s exit, noted that younger Fox News viewers had led the stampede. Carlson is a demagogue with dubious motives, and the young are especially vulnerable to demagogues. I regard it as unethical for a news organization to put demagogues on the air for exactly that reason. (Glenn Beck is vociferously defending Carlson. Of course he is. Demagogues stick together.)

Let’s move on from the demagoguery, however, and focus on the Carlson text message published by the New York Times earlier this week (I am about two days behind in my Times spelunking). The message was sent to one of Carlson’s producers after the January. 6, 2021 riot at the Capitol:

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Final Ethics Observations On The Bud Light-Dylan Mulvaney Ethics Train Wreck

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

The last time EA visited the corporate cautionary tale was on April 23, here. Today’s post should be the end-point for this particular ethics matter, but you never know.

1. This isn’t going to blow over. Some commenters here and professional woke spinners in the news media tried to make the case that the backlash over Bud Light putting trans performance artist/influencer Dylan Mulvaney on a Bud Light can and featuring the camp figure in a promotion pandering to LGTBQ audiences was short-lived and a “nothingburger.” That has not been the case. Bud Light sales have fallen significantly for the third consecutive week. Beer Business Daily described the response to the campaign as a “shocking deterioration” of Bud Light’s market share. “We’ve never seen such a dramatic shift in national share in such a short period of time,” the newsletter said. Meanwhile, Bud Light’s biggest competitors like Coors Light and Miller Light are gaining consumers while Bud Light loses them.

So the immediate ethics breach here was competence. Corporations are supposed to use marketing to increase sales, profit and favorable views of their products—in fact, they are obligated to. Using marketing and messaging to endorse controversial political positions as self-conscious virtue-signaling is irresponsible, and, frankly, stunningly stupid. Pick your analogy: Bud Light featuring Jane Fonda on a can during the Vietnam war? How about Cindy Sheehan on a can during the Bush administration? It is amazing that Bud Light’s management was so estranged from the views of its own market.

2. It is not the job of corporations to try to change the views of its market.

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Hollywood Writers Fear That AI Might Replace Them. Tough!

/ Jack Marshall / 26 Comments

The first Hollywood strike in 15 years began today, as talks with the studios broke down and the economic pressures of the streaming era sent unionized TV and film writers to picket for better pay. The strike has shut down most late-night talk shows, so it is already benefiting society. “No contracts, no content!” sign-carrying members of the Writers Guild of America chant outside various office buildings in Manhattan and L.A. The last writer’s strike shut down the industry for 100 days and helped send California into a recession.

As usual, the strike is about money. But far down the list of objectives for its contract negotiations under a section titled “Professional Standards and Protection in the Employment of Writers,” the union says it wants to “regulate use of material produced using artificial intelligence or similar technologies.”

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