In The Shadow Of Mt Hollywood

Gee, d'ya think? In this morning's New York Post , Target’s decision to move some of its LGBT pride apparel in some of its locations made national headlines, and it may have lost control of its own narrative in the process, a top consumer researcher says. Notice how gingerly the Post is covering this story. As I noted a week ago, Target's own corporate flack Erik Castaneda told Reuters that products are being withdrawn at all locations, not just in some southern states. The products Target is withdrawing are being removed from all its U.S. stores and from its website, Castaneda said. And as I noted yesterday, a YouTuber went undercover , representing himself as someone who wanted to buy a "tuck friendly" swimsuit, and was able to speak with a manager who explained these were "out of stock". Clearly Target is doing this very quietly, but as I noted in yesterday's post, it appeared to be actively dumping its Pride products even before th...

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least able to hide the damage the boycott has done -- although its weekly sales statistics are a week or more out of date when they're realeased, they're independent and hard to hide.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...