In The Shadow Of Mt Hollywood

Well, if anyone needs to read the tea leaves, Dylan Mulvaney just did a TikTok video that confusingly reveals he spoke with his dad and told him he was attracted to and wanted to date women, while at the same time asserting that he wanted to have babies. But an even more intriguing data point is this one at TheStreet: Target Just Dumped Its Pride Merchandise -- Here's Where It All May Go . This is important, because Bud Light has been the corporation least able to hide the damage the boycott has done -- although its weekly sales statistics are a week or more out of date when they're realeased, they're independent and hard to hide. Target's sales are much harder to track down, although its decline in stock price has been visible, and anecdotal reports of empty stores over the Memorial Day weekend are at least encouraging. But the link, while it's clearly been placed by Target's own press and investor relations people, is notable for its spin: Ta...

Homicide detectives say that when you're interrogating a suspect, an obvious lie is as good as a confession. I would extend this to say that when you're reading a respected commentator, seeing him obviously miss the point is as good as seeing him get it. In this column from Sunday , Jonathan Turley circles around and around in an effort to make a point, but he manages to miss it and unintentionally prove another one. His basic problem, which he can't shake, is that he's a member of the gentry class, which in the current alignment is allied with the one-percent rentiers, along with Marx's Lumpenproletariat , and a small but influential group of radical intellectuals that includes the pansexuals. According to Wikipedia , His father, John (Jack) Turley was an international architect, partner at Skidmore, Owens, and Merrill, and the former associate of famed modernist architect Mies van der Rohe. . . . His mother, Angela Piazza Turley, was a social worker a...

I kept thinking about the basic principles of corporate crisis management and contingency planning that I outlined in yesterday's post for the rest of the day, and I came to some non-obvious conclusions. Let's start with the first principle that was in my link , but which I didn't quote yesterday: Develop a crisis plan. Brainstorm potential crisis scenarios and use them to inform and regularly update your plan. . . . Simply having a plan is not enough when it comes to crisis management; you have to practice it. Everyone who would play a role should a crisis arise needs to know what the plan is and exactly what their role is. Actually, any public corporation with a board of directors is required to show such a plan to its auditors, and show the auditors that it tests it. Banks, utilities, and other companies that are separately regulated need to account for this with their regulatory bodies as well. At least when I was writing such plans, they focused mainly on...

I've mentioned here that I sometimes used to work in corporate contingency planning, both as a planner and part of a crisis response. A regional utility that I worked for at the time had a near-catastrophe when it failed to recognize that the 1994 Northridge earthquake had severely damaged its facilities. I was one of the people pulled off a desk job to carry a wrench and give the impression of restoring service, a last-minute move by the company that saved its reputation. So I have some experience in how these things ought to be done. So far, both Budweiser and Target have earned at least D grades in crisis management, but I think in those cases, there are mitigating factors where the public mood over transsexualism has been changing quickly, and other factors like failing national leadership are also coming into play. The one company so far that's earning a complete F is the Los Angeles Dodgers. In fact, my undergraduate institution had a grade beyond F called "flagra...

When I first saw the clips from Trump's CNN town hall on YouTube the morning after the event, I instinctively said "uh-oh" before I said anything else. What I was thinking was probably along the line that Trump is back, but he's not just back, he's back like John Wick or Jason Bourne. And I wasn't the only one; Christiane Amanpour, who must be the doyenne of unassailably correct opinion, called the event an "earthquake". Yesterday afternoon, when I heard that Bp Baron had called for a boycott of the LA Dodgers, I had the same gut uh-oh reaction. I need to parse this out. First, Bp Barron is hardly a fire-breathing conservative. Abp Cordileone of San Francisco was much more explicit in his reaction this past Tuesday to the Dodgers reversing their earlier decision to disinvite the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence from their Pride Night, enjoining his audience to "Gird your loins". Bp Barron had in fact earlier drawn criticism for appearin...

People keep missing the point. A YouTuber named Prime Time Stein had the brilliant idea to find out for himself what one of those "tuck friendly" Target women's bathing suits was like; he went into a Target, took one off the rack, went into the changing room, and tried it on. The results are visible in the screen shot above (click on the image for a clearer view). Whatever they claim to have done, it doesn't seem to make much difference. I get the impression that to be nice, he actually paid for it, but if it were me, I'd turn around and file a civil claim for false advertising, except I've got to question the judgment of any guy who'd go out and buy a women's bathing suit intended for men on the basis that it would somehow make it look like he wasn't a guy. Heck, back when I was single, even at that time (I lived in LA, after all), the advice was always just to be a little extra careful and check a "woman's" wrists or Adam's...

I noted this story just yesterday in the New York Post : Many Target locations across the country feature massive June Pride month displays on an annual basis, with items this year ranging from “tuck friendly” bathing suits for transgender people to mugs that say “gender fluid.” . . . A Target insider told Fox News Digital that many locations, mostly in rural areas of the South, have relocated Pride sections to avoid the kind of backlash Bud Light has received in recent weeks after using a transgender influencer in a promotional campaign. A Target insider said there were “emergency” calls on Friday and some managers and district senior directors were told to tamp down the Pride sections immediately. But as of the Post story yesterday, this was limited just to the places where the most bigoted rednecks lived and shopped: Fox News Digital has confirmed rural Target stores in South Carolina, Arkansas and Georgia are among the locations to move the Pride sections. Most rank-and...

Yesterday I ran into a data item that validates the contrarian theory of Epstein's business model that I outlined two weeks ago. On May 7, I said , Let's say Epstein was running honey traps. Let's take two examples of public figures who may have rubbed up against the Epstein operation the wrong way, Bill Gates and Alan Dershowitz. Let's say there were cameras secretly filming every last indiscretion, whatever may or may not have been alleged. Dershowitz fought his own allegation and was able to make it go away. Gates wound up divorcing his wife after a photo emerged of him and Epstein with a few other people, fully clothed, at a dinner. Gates maintained that's as far as anything went, and no secret camera footage emerged to contradict him. Yeah, his wife divorced him, but it appears there was evidence he was propositioning female subordinates completely independent of anything Epstein may or may not have had on tape. I doubt if anything he may or may not have d...

As of July 2015, the closest equivalent point to late May 2023 that I can find in a search for polling data, here's where the presidential race stood, according to CNN: With nearly all of the expected 2016 presidential candidates formally in the race, a new CNN/ORC national poll finds two recent entrants to the GOP field on the rise, while Hillary Clinton maintains her position atop the Democratic field, though holding a slightly slimmer lead. Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and businessman Donald Trump top the list of GOP presidential contenders following their back-to-back campaign launches in mid-June, and are the only two Republican candidates holding double-digit support among Republicans and Republican-leaning independents. . . . Looking ahead to the general election, Clinton continues to hold significant leads over Bush (54% Clinton to 41% Bush) and Christie (56% Clinton to 37% Christie). She has also opened up wide leads over Rubio (56% Clinton to 39% Rubio) and Walker (...

It's been a few weeks since Kevin Morris has been in the news. According to Breitbart, As the husband of Gabrielle Morgerman, “one of the most powerful women in the entertainment industry,” Morris is a legal heavyweight with tentacles in nearly every aspect of Hunter Biden’s professional life. In 2022, news reports surfaced that Hunter Biden retained Morris to oversee his public relations and media strategies. In turn, Morris reportedly paid Hunter’s over two-million-dollar IRS tax delinquency and bankrolled his $30,000-a-month apartment in Malibu, California. This link gives more background on the power couple: Gabrielle Morgerman, a 1981 Huntington High School graduate, is senior vice-president and head of the talent department at the prestigious William Morris Agency in Beverly Hills, CA. She earned an undergraduate degree at Smith College. In Dec. 1991, Ms. Morgerman, known as Gaby, married Patrick [Kevin] Morris, who obtained an undergraduate degree at Cornell Uni...

Bien pensant opinion has been at best bemused at the Bud Light boycott, and it's taken more than a month for the pro-trans forces to form an organized response. But as of this past week, it's begun to take shape. The nation's largest LGBTQ advocacy group is taking action against Anheuser-Busch over its handling of the conservative backlash to transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney, accusing the multinational beer company of caving to political pressure. In a May 9 letter shared exclusively with USA TODAY, the Human Rights Campaign informed the Bud Light maker that it has suspended its Corporate Equality Index score – a tool that scores companies on their policies for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer employees. . . . Anheuser-Busch, which had a score of 100, has 90 days to respond or the organization will consider docking its score, the Human Rights Campaign told the company in the letter. According to the New York Post, At stake is their Corporate ...

It's taken more than a day for even the sketchiest details to emerge in the latest Sam Brinton episode. As of yesterday, all we knew was in this Fox repor t: Sam Brinton, the embattled former senior Department of Energy (DOE) official, was arrested as a "fugitive from justice" by Maryland police late Wednesday. According to county records reviewed by Fox News Digital, Brinton was taken into custody in Rockville. A spokesperson for the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority (MWAA) Police, which is the lead law enforcement agency for both Washington, D.C., area airports, said the arrest was related to the theft of airport luggage, the third such criminal case involving Brinton. "Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority Police executed a search warrant May 17 in Montgomery County, Maryland, in connection with allegations of stolen property in luggage from Reagan National Airport that was brought to the department’s attention in February 2023," James Jo...

"There is a great disturbance in the Force." "I have felt it." "We have a new enemy, the young rebel who destroyed the Death Star. I have no doubt this boy is the offspring of Anakin Skywalker." According to the New York Post, The Los Angeles Dodgers have nixed plans to honor a radical group of “queer and trans nuns” at their upcoming Pride Night — following uproar over the allegedly “blatantly perverted, sexual and disgusting anti-Catholic hate group.” The baseball team announced earlier this month that it was honoring the local chapter of The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence with its annual Community Hero Award next month. The “nuns” — who have names like Sister T’aint A Virgin, Sister Porn Again and Sister Holly Lewya — were being awarded for supposedly “promoting human rights and respect for diversity and spiritual enlightenment.” On Wednesday, the Dodgers announced they had had a change of heart. The mainstream media reaction has ech...