Lite, Shmite, Ultra-Shite – You All Suck

In the wake of Bud Light performing the impossible task of stepping on its own transgender wokedick comes this silliness:

Miller Lite is facing criticism for a weeks-old ad that pushed a feminist message.

“So here’s to women,” comedian Ilana Glazer says in the ad, which Miller Lite published in March for Women’s History Month. “Because without us there would be no beer.”

Without women, there pretty much wouldn’t be any need for beer, but let’s continue:

Glazer explains that women have made beer throughout history and the beer industry has not paid them enough credit. The ad criticizes beer advertisements that feature women in bikinis.

Errr nobody gives a rat’s ass about who actually makes beer — it could be made by Brazilian macaque monkeys, for that matter, and I suspect some actually might be — but showing women in bikinis is just the beer industry’s equivalent of a cosmetic company using some actress as their “face”, i.e. getting the attention of its core buyers.

But that just leads to my main point.

Regardless of who makes it and who drinks it, “light” or “lite” (i.e. diluted) beer is a totally shit product. 

We shouldn’t be boycotting Bud Light or Miller Lite or any of their cohort brands;  we should be boycotting diluted beer in toto.

When I say “we” I mean all existing male drinkers of this foul swill — I had one sip of Miller Lite back in 1985, and have never touched the shit (of any brand) since, so I can’t very well boycott something I never drink.

Still, I can’t deny that there’s a need for people to drink lots of hardly-alcoholic booze, so I have to reluctantly concede that there is a market for it.  Going back to my first experiences with light beer, I recall that anyone throwing a party always had to get some Lite in so that the girls could drink with the boys.

So while men have always bought light beer, it’s generally been for their womenfolk and not themselves:  men can consume and handle alcohol in quantity more easily than women — fact! — so why not?  Light beer, then, has always been aimed at women, but subtly:  showing bikini-clad women in those ads simply reminds the buyers — mostly men — not to forget the ladies when they plan their party.

Clearly, though, that’s just Not Appropriate anymore, and Men Are Pigs and Women Are Downtrodden and and and and, ad nauseam.

Is it time for a breakfast martini yet?  Oh, why the fuck not?  If there was any 6X anywhere around, I’d go for one of those, but there isn’t so I’ll just substitute.

Not a lite bone in its considerable body.


Judging from the Comments, I seem to have pissed in a few people’s light beer.  LOL

Unaffected, Yet Still Amused

As someone who has never drunk more than a mouthful of “light” beer (true story:  I tasted a Lite when I first arrived here, didn’t finish the drink, and never touched another of the type ever again), the brouhaha surrounding Bud Light’s marketing decision to elevate some girlyboy to be the brand spokesman has left me totally unmoved — well, apart from bursting out in derisive laughter, that is.

I don’t have a sexy MBA from some elite academic institution, so I’m hardly one to judge this latest example of woke stupidity [redundancy alert].  Nevertheless, here are some core principles I’ve discovered along the way, in a career that spanned over three decades of marketing and advertising.

Marketing Rule #1:  You never neglect (never mind alienate) your existing customer base.  They are the ones who pay your salaries and keep your production lines moving.

Marketing Rule #2:  Once your brand is established, you never chase after “new” customers, but concentrate on getting your existing customers to use your product more.  This is both intuitive and cost-effective, except perhaps to an inexperienced person with a sexy MBA from some elite academic institution.

Marketing Rule #3:  You never make radical changes to your marketing or advertising strategy, especially when it comes into direct conflict with the philosophy of the first two rules.

Marketing Rule #4:  You never let the latest “thing” drive changes to your marketing strategy, especially if that latest “thing” conflicts directly with your brand’s core principle (Unique Selling Proposition, ethos, whatever) and customer base.

And for senior management:  if anyone in your marketing structure — executives, ad agency, promotion company, whatever — suggests anything that flies in the face of the above four principles, fire them immediately before they get to make those changes.

Understand that they’re not being fired for making a mistake.  They’re being fired for deliberately ignoring the canon of the marketplace.

One Or The Other

If it’s not Gummint fucking us over, it’s Gummint Lite (amazon.com) and its suppliers:

Owners of Roald Dahl ebooks are having their libraries automatically updated with the new censored versions containing hundreds of changes to language related to weight, mental health, violence, gender and race. Readers who bought electronic versions of the writer’s books, such as Matilda and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, before the controversial updates have discovered their copies have now been changed.

Puffin Books, the company which publishes Dahl novels, updated the electronic novels, in which Augustus Gloop is no longer described as fat or Mrs Twit as fearfully ugly, on devices such as the Amazon Kindle.

Dahl’s biographer Matthew Dennison last night accused the publisher of “strong-arming readers into accepting a new orthodoxy in which Dahl himself has played no part.”

I think it’s the “automatically” part that gets to me — even though I don’t have Kindle or any ebooks.

Thanks but no thanks. Paper, Dead Tree, whatever you want to call it, are mine, all mine. As for Kindle: turning them into “kindling” would be my suggestion.

Baby Vulcan Smiles

We Texans love our guns, and therefore our gun stores.  So when some Noo Yawk assholes start fucking around with the latter, we take action:

Citigroup Inc. is once again facing an ouster from the booming Texas municipal-bond market after the state’s Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office determined the bank “discriminates” against the firearms industry. 

The ruling indicates that the New York-based bank runs afoul of a Republican-backed law passed nearly two years ago that bars most government contracts with companies that engage in anti-gun business practices. The decision appears to halt the bank’s ability to underwrite most municipal-bond offerings in the state.

It’s a whipsaw moment for Citigroup. The bank had temporarily halted its work in the Texas muni market after the law went into effect in September 2021 but had revived that business two months later, saying it complies with the law. Paxton’s ruling ends a months-long probe into Citi’s corporate policy.

“It has been determined that Citigroup has a policy that discriminates against a firearm entity or firearm trade association,” Leslie Brock, assistant attorney general chief of the public finance division, wrote in the letter. 

The determination means that Citigroup’s so-called standing letter, a document that had thus far allowed the bank to underwrite debt in one of the nation’s largest public bond markets, has been rejected, according to a Jan. 18 letter distributed to lawyers and viewed by Bloomberg.

“Therefore, until further notice, we will not approve any public security issued on or after today’s date in which Citigroup purchases or underwrites the public security, or in which Citigroup is otherwise a party to a covered contract relating to the public security,” according to the letter.

Of course, Citi’s acting all butt-hurt:

“We’re disappointed with the decision and will remain engaged with the Texas AG office to review our options,” said Mark Costiglio, a Citigroup spokesperson, in an emailed statement. “Citi has been financing public works in Texas for more than 150 years and we currently have more than 8,500 employees who call Texas home. As we’ve said previously, Citi does not discriminate against the firearms sector and believe we are in compliance with Texas law.”

Well, our legal guys say you do, and therefore you aren’t.

Yankee shitheads. Fuck ’em.

Boycott The Boycotters?

As far as I know, these are the advertisers who have “paused” their presence on Twatter since Elon Musk took over:

  • Audi — can’t afford their overpriced cars anyway
  • General Mills — so much for that weekly box of Cheerios in the cart
  • General Motors — never on my list because crap cars and trucks
  • Mondelez International (formerly Kraft [Snack] Foods)– never cared for Oreos, Triscuits, Ritz and TUC either.  As for their chocolate brands, I can only see a problem with Cadbury (hello Lindt)  and Fry’s — massive concern from New Wife, who loves their Turkish Delight
  • Pfizer — pfuckem, not going to get another ‘Rona jab anyway
  • Volkswagen — well, that’s a real stinker.  As a lifetime buyer of VW cars, wagons and vans (7 or 8 so far), I guess I’ll just have to break the VW habit and look elsewhere for a replacement for the Tiguan when the time comes, as long as it’s not Chev or Audi (hello… Mazda?).

Also:

Advertising companies Interpublic Group—with clients like CVS and Nintendo—and Havas Media—whose clients include O2, Hyundai, and Domino’s Pizza—have recommended to their clients to pause paid advertising on Twitter, Forbes reported.

No more Rx from CVS, then (hello Wal-Mart or Kroger), and I’ve never been a user / consumer of the others.

One person (Yer Humble Narrator) can’t do much, it seems, when it comes to making these assholes pay for their wokedom.  Let’s hope there are a lot more people who think the way I do.

And remember:  not being a Twatter adherent myself, I actually care little about whatever happens to them.  What gets up my nose is the Leftist reaction (note the players) to Musk’s avowed intent to make the company less stridently Left-wing and fervently anti-conservative.  Maybe he should just fire more Twatter employees as a result of lowered ad revenue.