It was just a few years ago, it seems, when every company fully embraced the woke ethos. Every corporation had some variation of DEI as part of its business, and many were vocally bragging about this fact. They made it clear they were willing to discriminate against people, but since it was a different group than in the 20th Century, it was totally cool.
They took Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben off the label, and they kicked the Land O Lakes Indian off of her land, but kept the land.
Every company jumped knee-deep into celebrating Pride Month in June, even using rainbow colored profile pics on social media. Well, except for their Middle Eastern accounts, anyway.
It didn't look good, to say the least.
Then, things changed.
Bud Light decided to celebrate Dylan Mulvaney's cosplay efforts, feeding into the delusion that Mulvaney was really just a gender-flipped Pinocchio--what with the whole "I'm a real girl" thing--and pretty much killed the brand. People had had enough, and they lashed out, destroying Bud Light's market share.
Of course, I couldn't boycott it. I never drank Bud Light, even when I was an avid beer drinker. Plenty of others did, though.
Jaguar released a bizarre ad that signalled a new shift in the company's focus. They saw a 97 percent drop in sales, which even those clueless in business matters know is catastrophic.
Most recently, Cracker Barrel decided to remove the old white dude from their logo, and lost $100 million in value almost overnight.
The woke corporate ideals that lead to each of these trainwreckers are still there, but the pendulum on the tolerance of those woke ideals has shifted, and it's not the steady tick of a metronome. This pendulum is a wrecking ball that is destroying companies that refuse to learn from the mistakes of others.
American Eagle learned. It used Sidney Sweeney in an ad, embraced her sex appeal, then blew off everyone trying to turn their slogan into Nazi propaganda. As a result, their stock has gone up, and I'd be shocked if their sales have gone up as well.
Why? Because people were sick of being lectured, especially by amoral corporations that never gave a damn about gay people, trans people, fat people, or anyone else. They were worried about their bottom line, which is fine. That's what they're supposed to be worried about. Yet they thought woke was profitable. They were told that it was even. So, they became woke scolds themselves, and it rang hollow.
In fact, it probably helped wreck the whole woke thing, now that I think about it.
But while they weren't the first to embrace woke, they're also among the last to recognize that it's over. Now, it really is "get woke, go broke."
Cracker Barrel wisely caved. If they leave the decor alone, I'll be thrilled as it's a family favorite place to go, but I'll never forget what they tried to take from us, all because they don't understand the American people. Even if this wasn't woke, it was always dumb.
The pendulum has swung back the other direction, and the corporate world may well enough up as nothing more than a pile of wreckage if they don't follow Cracker Barrel's lead in the future.
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